Tempted Again Read online

  Connor had been a third-generation Chicago cop. His grandfather, his dad, his brothers—all Chicago cops. Well, his younger brother Aidan had recently moved to Seattle, but he was still a big-city cop. Connor’s family didn’t understand why Connor had left Chicago two years ago for “a hick town.” Their words, not his.

  Connor had his reasons and they were nobody’s business but his. No one expected him to spill his guts. That wasn’t the way his family worked. It certainly wasn’t the way a cop worked.

  The bottom line was that his years working undercover had left a mark on him. A permanent mark. Connor absently rubbed his left shoulder where a jagged scar remained to remind him of a knife fight that had almost ended his life.

  Connor’s older brother Logan had once told him that undercover cops were great liars. They had to be.

  Connor had certainly been damn good at his job. So good that the lies had nearly consumed him.

  His gaze traveled over the crowd. He knew most of the people he saw. The six Flannigan kids, all age eight and under, were present with their parents front and center. The kids had dripping ice cream cones in their hands. The only exception was the baby still in the stroller, who was reaching for her sister’s cone, her face screwed up on the verge of a hissy fit.

  Farther down, the older generation was well represented by a group from the Hopeful Meadows Senior Center. The women outnumbered the men by ten to one today.

  Beside them was Flo Foxworth in her folding chair. Flo always reserved a curbside front row seat for every city event—from parades to concerts to fireworks. She worked in the post office and knew who subscribed to what magazines although she didn’t share that knowledge with many. Not far behind her was Digger Diehl, the best plumber in town, who proudly wore his DRAIN SURGEON T-shirt with his denim overalls.

  The mayor, Lyle Bedford, wore his customary red vest with his suit as he walked at the head of the parade with the Girl Scout Troop holding the large blue-and-gold FOUNDERS’ DAY PARADE banner. Looking at him now, you’d never know that the guy had had open-heart surgery six months ago. A lifetime resident of Hopeful, Lyle had been mayor for nearly two decades and his popularity showed no signs of decreasing. Lyle loved Hopeful and the town loved him back.

  Behind him was a Brownie Troop then a group of Boy Scouts. Trailing them was one of the town’s shiny red fire trucks with Connor’s buddy Kyle “Sully” Sullivan at the wheel followed by the fully decorated Chamber of Commerce float.

  Next came the Hopeful High School Marching Band playing the theme song from Star Wars—playing it badly but with a lot of enthusiasm. The teenagers’ faces were hot and sweaty from the above-normal May temperature, which was already in the low eighties. At least the predicted storms had held off for the parade.

  The arrival of the perky cheerleaders waving their pom-poms was greeted with cheers from the men at the senior center—both of them. The football team was met with cheers from everyone for their impressive winning record last season.

  Connor looked away to check the crowd. A second later, he heard a murmuring among the parade-watchers. Turning back to the parade he was surprised to see a rusty lime-green VW Bug crawling along the parade route at about three miles an hour, blaring some rock song he didn’t know.

  He expected to see some rebel teenager at the wheel, someone who’d pulled this stunt on a dare. Instead he saw a woman. Not a senior citizen who might have gotten confused, but a fairly young woman. Her smile was a little strained as she held up her hand and waved at the crowd as if she were royalty. Her face was flushed and she wore no ring on her left hand.

  There were no markings on the car to indicate that it was part of any city organization or group.

  Who is she?

  Connor didn’t realize he’d said the words aloud, until the woman beside him turned to answer him. “That’s our new librarian,” library director Roz Jorgen told him.

  “Is she part of some library entry in the parade?” he asked.

  “The teenage pages and members of Friends of the Library are participants in the book cart drill team…”

  “That VW may be small but it’s no book cart.”

  Roz shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No problem. I know what to say.”

  Connor walked around the barrier and headed for the rowdy VW with the out-of-state license plates. “Stop your vehicle, ma’am,” he said.

  “What?” she yelled.

  “Turn down the music.”

  “I can’t. It’s broken. It turns off and on by itself.”

  “Green Day,” a teenager yelled from the sidewalk. “ ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams.’ Awesome song.”

  “Pull off at the next intersection,” Connor ordered the librarian, shouting so he could be heard over the music.

  She flashed her brown eyes at him, startled perhaps by his bossiness. She shouldn’t be. He was a cop, after all. Giving orders went with the badge. And he was in uniform, complete with sunglasses so there was no mistaking who he was.

  Several things about her startled him. Her eyes, for one thing. They weren’t just brown, they were a light brown that reminded him of fine whiskey. Her shoulder-length brown hair was loose around her face.

  He moved a barricade so she could turn off the parade route onto a side street.

  Putting the car in park, she hopped out of the car before turning to face him. “If you can figure out how to stop the music, I’d appreciate it.”

  He reached in and twisted the keys in the ignition, turning the car off.

  “I should have thought of that. But then I’d be stuck in the middle of the parade and I didn’t want to do that.” Her smile was a little wobbly. “I wasn’t expecting a police escort.”

  “I wasn’t expecting an unauthorized rusty VW to appear in the parade,” he said.

  “Are you going to give me a ticket?”

  The dread in her voice made him curious. Not that most folks were eager to get a ticket. But there was something more in her case.

  “Since you’re new in town, no,” he said.

  “What makes you think I’m new?”

  “Aside from the out-of-state plates, you mean?” he said.

  She nodded and nervously twisted a strand of her hair before tucking it behind her ear.

  “Most local folks would know better than to crash a parade,” he said. “And Roz told me that you were the new librarian.”

  “She saw me in the parade?”

  He nodded, watching as a blush covered her face. She looked good all hot and bothered. “License and registration, please,” he said.

  “Or course. Um, do I take them out of my wallet or just hand you the wallet?”

  “Have you ever received a ticket before?”

  “No, of course not!”

  She seemed upset that he’d even ask such a question.

  As she reached for her wallet he noticed the paleness around her left ring finger.

  According to the New York driver’s license she handed him, her name was Marissa Johnson. She was born in 1983 and was five foot six.

  “Well, Ms. Johnson, welcome to Hopeful. I’m Sheriff Connor Doyle.” He removed his sunglasses to give her one of his trademark reprimanding don’t-mess-with me stares. Did he imagine her startled recoil just then? Hell, on the don’t-mess-with-me scale, the look he’d just given her barely rated a two. He could be much more intimidating without even breaking a sweat. “You really do need to pay attention to the barricades and other traffic signals in town.”

  The signals he was getting from her abruptly changed from nervous uncertainty to downright irritation. He wondered what had caused the transition. He’d let her off with a warning and even welcomed her to town. What more did she want? Why was she eyeing him as if he was rodent shit all of a sudden?

  Connor’s expression remained impassive as he slid his sunglasses back on. “You could have caused an accident. Could have hit someone in the parade,” he said.

&nbs
p; She remained silent. She was biting her lip, which strangely enough made him want to reach out and save her lush lower lip from such abuse.

  He definitely had not imagined the change in her attitude. Maybe she had a thing against cops? Then why had she acted all sweet and polite in the beginning? No, he was willing to bet it wasn’t all cops, it was something about him in particular that got her all riled up.

  Connor was used to riling up women. His brothers often kidded him that he was the womanizer in the family, which was bullshit because the truth was none of the Doyle men had trouble with the ladies. No trouble finding them, that is. Definitely some trouble keeping them. Connor’s older brother Logan and his dad were both divorced.

  Connor had lost track of how many times his dad had hopped on the marriage-go-round. Logan had recently remarried and hooked up with a librarian. Connor had been the best man at their Las Vegas wedding in December. That hadn’t changed his personal aversion to getting hitched, however.

  Connor eyed Ms. Johnson carefully before contacting dispatch to run a check on her plates and license. The response came back negative. Clean record. Not even a parking ticket.

  He returned her license to her. She made a point of avoiding touching him as if they were in first grade and he had cooties. What was her problem?

  “What are you doing to my daughter?” a woman demanded as she marched toward them. “You don’t think she has enough trouble, losing her job and her house and her husband? She could be having a nervous breakdown.”

  “Mom, what are you doing here?” Marissa said.

  “Flo called to tell me you’d been arrested.”

  “I was just giving her a warning,” Connor said. “If she’s unstable, however, she shouldn’t be driving.”

  He knew it was the wrong thing to say the instant the words left his mouth.

  The librarian turned into an infuriated woman warrior ready to do battle. “I am not unstable,” she growled at him. “And you have no right saying that I am.”

  She stood there, in her white shirt, jeans and sandals a good six inches shorter than his six-foot frame and dared him to say something else.

  Of course it was a dare he accepted. “And you have no right crashing a parade,” he said.

  “I didn’t crash it. I was very careful not to hit anything. It was a mistake, that’s all.”

  Connor was starting to think it was a mistake not to ticket her for giving him a hard time.

  He had the feeling that things in Hopeful were about to get much more interesting with her arrival. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

  Marissa couldn’t believe it. Of all the cops in all of Ohio, she had to be pulled over by this one. Connor Doyle. The guy who’d taken her virginity back in high school.

  Okay, so he hadn’t “taken” it. She’d willingly given it to him. Practically thrown herself at him. She’d been a high school senior and he’d been a freshman at Midwest College. An out-of-towner from Chicago. A sexy bad boy with a romantic streak. He’d followed his high school sweetheart to college but they’d broken up halfway through the school year.

  Marissa had been working beside Connor at the popular Angelo’s Pizzeria for five months by then. She’d gone by the nickname of “Rissa” in those days and had dyed her short hair ink black. She’d had a humongous crush on him from day one.

  When she’d heard Connor was available, she’d been thrilled. Not that she was the only girl to try and catch his eye. But she had the advantage of knowing him for months—knowing what made him laugh, knowing his favorite songs, the way he thought.

  So she’d screwed up her courage and “Rebel Rissa” had kissed him one night as they’d left the pizzeria. He’d pulled her closer and kissed her back.

  “You taste like tomato sauce,” he’d murmured against her mouth.

  “So do you,” she’d murmured back.

  They’d done a lot of murmuring in those days. A lot of kissing. He’d introduced her to the art of French kissing and she’d become hooked. They were a couple. Not that she went around bragging about it and not that she told her parents. What she and Connor had shared was too fiery and intimate to talk about. Their actions spoke louder than mere words.

  And their actions had escalated with every heated embrace or tongue-seducing kiss. She’d wanted him to make love to her and he had. She hadn’t told him she was a virgin because she didn’t want him to have second thoughts.

  Her first time had been awkward and a bit painful but he’d been so tender and loving afterward that she’d fallen even deeper in love with him. Her second time was much better and her third time was awesome. So were the multiple times after that. She was on the pill and he used a condom so they were being careful. But she hadn’t been careful with her heart.

  So she’d been totally blindsided when their three-month relationship ended at the end of the school year. He’d dumped her and gone back to Chicago. No explanation. Nothing.

  She was starting to see a pattern here. She’d been blindsided by her first love and blindsided by her last love, her husband, Brad. Men sucked.

  How dare Connor show up here in her hometown. This was supposed to be her safe haven. And despite the badge he now wore, there was nothing safe about Connor Doyle. Not one solitary thing. He still had those hard-to-define blue-green-gray bedroom eyes, broad shoulders, and lean build. Age hadn’t seemed to do anything but improve his looks.

  No, there was nothing safe about Connor. He was trouble she didn’t need.

  When in trouble, seek shelter. But how the heck was she supposed to do that when the trouble was right here in her own backyard?

  Chapter Two

  “George, we’re home,” Marissa’s mom happily announced as she tugged Marissa into the living room.

  Marissa’s dad, Professor George Bennett the Third, did not reply. Given his lack of response or appearance, her mom said, “He’s probably working on his laptop in his study and listening to his medieval madrigals on his iPod with the volume cranked up.”

  “We shouldn’t bother him then,” Marissa said.

  “He’s your father. You’d think the least he could do would be to greet you when you come home.”

  “That’s okay. Really.”

  Her mother sniffed her disapproval. “You could use a little paternal moral support after almost getting arrested.”

  The truth was that her dad had never been real big in the moral support department. In fact, the last time Marissa remembered really bonding with him was…well, she couldn’t actually recall. Sure, he’d shown her the trees lining the entrance to the college but she’d only been five or six then. He must have said he was proud of her once or twice since that time, right?

  She certainly didn’t want him knowing about the parade-crashing incident. That would definitely not make him proud. “Let’s not tell Dad about that unfortunate incident regarding the parade, okay?”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Her mom reached for her cell phone. “I should call your sister and tell her you’re finally here.”

  “Can we hold off on that until I get settled in a bit?” Marissa’s relationship with her younger sister, Jess, was complicated at best. Marissa couldn’t label it as either good or bad. It just…was. Sometimes they argued and sometimes they got along.

  Her mom set the phone down. “I guess we could wait a bit. I’ve got your old room all ready.”

  Marissa knew from her brief visit for the library job interview that her mom hadn’t changed anything in Marissa’s room since she’d left for college. But it still shook her a bit to walk in and see the purple walls and all the mementos from that time in her life. A time when there were so many adventures yet to come. A time when she’d had a mega-crush on Connor.

  She’d burned any photos of him after he’d dumped her and gone back to Chicago. The pics on the cork bulletin board on the wall were of other events during her high school years, not that one. And there were photos of her dog Bosco, a rescue from the local animal
shelter who’d died in his sleep at the ripe old age of fifteen. They’d gotten Bosco when Marissa was two. She and Bosco had grown up together. They hadn’t gotten another dog after his death because there was no replacing Bosco.

  Marissa set her backpack on the bed with its paisley Indian cotton cover and pulled her wheeled suitcase farther into the room. The west-facing windows allowed the afternoon sun to pool on the hardwood floor and also afforded Marissa a view of any oncoming storms.

  The storm thing was important to her after surviving a major tornado that had swept through Hopeful when Marissa was eleven. She’d been home alone with Bosco at the time. Thankfully, the storm hadn’t damaged the house other than broken and cracked windows. But it had completely destroyed houses at the end of their block. So much for living on Tranquility Lane.

  When in trouble, seek shelter.

  Marissa had sought shelter that day, racing down to the basement with Bosco when the storm hit as tornado sirens blared in the distance. Then the roar of the twister overwhelmed all else, shattering glass and shaking the entire house.

  She’d hugged Bosco close and buried her face in his fur as the two of them had crouched low and shook together. She could still remember those moments with photographic clarity. The storm had snuck up on her. The sun had been shining half an hour earlier.

  To this day, she still had tornado nightmares. And she had a thing about being able to have a window with a western exposure because that’s where most of the storms came from. After the disaster, which had killed half a dozen people, Marissa had insisted her bedroom be moved across the hall to the former guest room so she’d have a western exposure to see bad weather approaching.

  This room was meant to be her sanctuary. All of the high school items around the room had personal meaning, from a quirky Peanuts cartoon with Snoopy and Woodstock to her Oasis poster. Their song “Wonderwall” had been one of her favorites