All Shook Up Read online

The minute she disappeared into the house, he gripped Butch’s hair and pulled his head back, pressing the barrel of the gun a little more tightly against Butch’s carotid artery. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just pull the trigger now and save us all a lot of trouble.”

  “Christ, man,” Butch croaked. “You don’t wanna do that—”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, amigo. Because I do.” He drilled the gun deeper yet into the vulnerable skin beneath Butch’s jaw. “I really do.”

  Butch’s nostrils flared wide and his eyes showed the white of panic all around his irises. “Think about this a minute, J.D.,” he urged. “You’re not the type of guy to commit cold-blooded murder.”

  “I didn’t think so, either,” J.D. agreed. “But that was before you messed with my woman.” He lowered his head and murmured in Butch’s ear, “It would be the perfect solution all around, don’t you think?”

  Butch’s eyes sliced in his direction. “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Killing you would be a big favor to the world at large, and get me off the hook for providing your alibi. The more I think about it, in fact, the more I like the idea. Wanna hear what I’m going to tell the sheriff when he gets here?”

  “J.D….”

  “I don’t know why he wanted to kill me, Officer,” J.D. said in a sincere tone imbued with a hint of hurt confusion. “I thought we were good friends, but he kept saying he was going to drag me out into the woods and blow my head off. Luckily, before he could, Ms. Lawrence hit him with a rock. That’s when I called you. Only he wasn’t out cold and he grabbed Dru. I kicked him, but then he tried to grab the gun I’d taken off him, and we struggled. Then the gun just…went off. God, I sure didn’t mean to kill him.” J.D. smelled a sharp ammonia smell and looked down to see a patch of wetness spreading across the fly of Butch’s jeans. He felt a fierce satisfaction, and the rage consuming him suddenly drained away. “Whoops. It’s not nearly as much fun to be on the receiving end of these threats, is it, buddy?”

  Butch’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to pull the trigger, are you, Carver?”

  “Nope.” He eased the gun’s barrel back a fraction. “Not unless you force my hand.”

  “That’s the difference between us, you know,” Butch said contemptuously. “When it comes down to the wire, you’re nothing but a pussy.”

  “That a fact? You might want to note that it wasn’t me who pissed my pants. And the real difference between us, you dumb shit, is that I know what’s important in life and you still haven’t figured out what the hell that is.”

  “Oh, I know what’s important.”

  “Yeah, that’s why you killed some poor schmuck rather than have to ask your wife for beer money. Or—here’s a concept for you—get up off your ass and actually hit the pavement to find a job so you could pay for it yourself.”

  “You self-righteous prick. At least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ll go to jail, too.”

  “We’ll see. Another difference between us is that I understand that killing you isn’t the answer to keeping me out of it. But you don’t quite grasp that, do you, Butch? You still don’t get that it’s wrong to kill a man just because he stood between you and a six-pack.”

  The screen door squeaked and J.D. looked up to see Dru staring out at them from behind it. For just a second he froze, trying to see her expression through the mesh. Then gravel crunched in the drive behind the house.

  He returned his attention to Butch. “Looks like your ride is here, ace.”

  Sticking the gun back in his waistband, he reached down with his free hand and hauled Butch to his feet. A moment later the sheriff’s deputy came around the corner of the house.

  Yet as glad as J.D. was to see him, he couldn’t help but feel that the man’s appearance spelled the end of not only Butch’s dreams, but his own as well.

  26

  The minute the deputy bundled Butch into his cruiser, Dru turned to J.D. She hauled off and smacked his chest with the flat of her hand. “Just take me out into the woods somewhere and shoot me?” she demanded, then wrapped her arms around his waist to hold him with desperate strength. God, she’d been so afraid. Pressing her cheek into his chest, she glowered up at him and said, “I ought to shoot you.”

  “I know.” His arms closed around her and he held her close for a moment. Then, too soon for her peace of mind, he pushed her back to hold her at arm’s length. The regret in his expression started butterflies dancing in her stomach.

  “I’m sorry, Dru,” he said, gently brushing his thumbs back and forth in the hollows above her collarbone. “Sorry you heard that. Sorry you were forced into an act of violence. Hell, I’m sorry I involved you in this whole sick mess in the first pla—”

  “Drucilla!” At Sophie’s anxious voice, Dru looked around to see her aunt and uncle emerging from the spur trail.

  The sheriff’s car was just backing out of the drive, and she could see Butch staring sullenly at them through the side window. She shivered. The last thing she wanted was for her son to be in that man’s sights—even if it was merely a glimpse as they hauled his murderous carcass off to jail. Pulling free of J.D.’s embrace, she took an anxious step toward her aunt and uncle.

  “It’s all right,” Sophie said as they approached, and her uncanny ability to read her niece’s mind immediately comforted Dru. “We sent Tate to act as spotter for a group of water-skiers that Joe’s taking out. He’ll be occupied for another hour at least. What happened, darling? You weren’t very coherent on the phone.”

  “Maybe I can explain,” J.D. said, and gave them an abbreviated rendition of the past hour.

  When Dru saw he planned to leave out every bit of his own heroics, she interspersed some commentary of her own. But she felt like a split personality as her mind worked on two separate levels at once. She was torn between admiration for J.D. and a guilty anger that she kept stuffing down. She wanted to provide her aunt and uncle with a more well-rounded version of what had happened, yet at the same time—

  “J.D. told Butch if he killed him in his cabin he’d probably be caught—then he advised the guy to take him out into the woods somewhere far away from here so Butch could kill him in peace instead!” She simply couldn’t wrap her mind around that.

  “For chrissake, Dru!” J.D. snapped, and Dru blinked at the ire in his voice. “I wasn’t about to have you or Tate discover my body if things went wrong, but you’re making it sound as if I offered myself up like some sacrificial lamb.”

  “Considering that’s exactly what I thought you were doing, John David, how else would I put it?”

  “I’m sure J.D. had a plan to rescue himself,” Ben interjected tactfully.

  “Damn straight I did.” But J.D.’s mouth crooked up on one side. “Which is not to say that I wasn’t mighty grateful to you and your rock.”

  To Dru’s utter horror, all of the emotion of the past couple hours caught up with her and she burst into tears.

  “Damn! Aw, damn, sweetheart.” J.D. pulled her into his arms. “Don’t do that. Please. Don’t cry.” He snuggled her a little closer, rocking them side to side. “I’m sorry you had to hit him. I know that violence isn’t exactly an everyday event for you.”

  The way it is for me. That was the unspoken inference, and that was what Dru truly cried about—because she knew the way J.D.’s mind worked by now. “You’re planning to leave, aren’t you?”

  “Of course he isn’t, honey,” Ben answered for him. “You’re still upset, but once you have a minute to catch your breath, you’ll realize the threat has been removed. There’s no reason for J.D. to go now.”

  But Dru could feel J.D.’s stillness against her. And she’d seen that regret in his eyes. She knuckled the tears from her eyes and looked over at her aunt and uncle. “Could I have a little time alone with J.D.?”

  “Yes, of course.” Sophie hooked her arm through Ben’s. “Come along, darling.”

  “But—”

  The lo
ok she gave him made him snap his mouth shut in mid-protest. She turned a gentle smile on Dru. “We’ll be at home if you need us.”

  They disappeared down the trail a moment later, and J.D. gazed into Dru’s flushed face. He realized that the next few minutes were bound to be about as difficult as it gets, when she extricated herself from his arms, took a huge step back, and faced him with her arms crossed over her breasts.

  The look on her face said, Explain yourself, buddy, and he felt his own defenses kick in. He crossed his arms over his chest also. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “You’re planning to walk out of my life—you don’t get a say about my expression, too.”

  He took a giant stride toward her, tempted to snatch her up and shake her…or to hold her still long enough to kiss that stubborn you’re-the-slime-on-the-bottom-of-my-shoe look from her face. Instead, he stopped inches shy of actually touching her, his hands fisted at his sides.

  Touching her would not be a good idea. Not if he planned to get out of her life so she could go back to the one she’d had before he’d crashed into it.

  The one she deserved to have back.

  He thrust his nose next to hers instead. “You suddenly a mind reader?” he demanded, refusing to feel guilty. He was going to do the right thing if it killed him. “What the hell makes you think you know my plans?”

  That stubborn chin of hers cranked another notch higher. “You plan on sticking around, J.D.?”

  Well, shit. That went to the heart of it, didn’t it? He looked her straight in her big baby blues and said, “I provided an alibi for Butch the day he killed a convenience-store clerk. Until today, I didn’t know he’d shot the man, but that’s no excuse. Neither is the fact that I owed Butch a debt for saving me from falling off a building when we were kids. I want you to know, though, that I honest-to-God believed him when he told me he was with a girlfriend while that store was being robbed. I swear to you that I never would have lied for him if I’d believed for a minute he was involved in the robbery.” It was crucial she believed that much, at least.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” she agreed. “But why didn’t you just let the girlfriend provide his alibi?”

  “Because he’s married to the meanest woman in the Western Hemisphere, and I knew she’d slice his balls off and serve them for dinner if she’d heard he was stepping out on her.” Oh, good, Carver. He’d provided an alibi for a murder suspect so the suspect’s wife wouldn’t discover her husband was cheating on her. He just kept on sounding more and more heroic, didn’t he?

  He swore. “I don’t have a decent excuse, Dru. I just allowed myself to be talked into it—which is another reason I have to go to Seattle and turn myself in.”

  “What’ll happen to you when you do?”

  He shrugged. “I could get off with a slap on the wrist, I suppose. Or I could go straight to jail without passing Go.” He thought the latter more likely, but didn’t say so aloud.

  Dru’s arms slid from their militant pose, and she wrapped them around her waist to hug herself. “Either way, you don’t plan on coming back, do you?”

  He didn’t look away, though the pain in her eyes made him want to. “No.”

  Dru felt something inside her crack in two. She’d heard enough of his conversation with Butch to know that she meant something to him. And still he was willing to simply walk off and throw it all away.

  Willing to throw her away.

  Anger flared up like an inferno exposed to fresh oxygen. Its fiery fury burned hotter and stronger than her pain, and she welcomed its cleansing heat.

  “Well, that works out very nicely for you, doesn’t it?” she demanded coolly.

  He stilled. “What?”

  “You get to stroll away from a sexual arrangement that was probably beginning to bore you, anyway.”

  “Jesus, Dru. You can’t possibly believe—”

  “Why, did I miss some declaration of undying love? But no—you did warn me you weren’t a man who believed in love ever after, didn’t you?” She hugged herself tighter, but arranged her features to convey indifference. It seemed vitally important that he not know how hurt, how furious, she was. “So feel free to leave with a perfectly clear conscience. I’m used to being discarded like a used Kleenex once a man gets his fill of me.”

  The anger in her stomach churned hotter. She wanted to lash out, to make him hurt the way she hurt. “But just for a change of pace, John David, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. As soon as the dust settles from the back of your car disappearing over the rise, I think I’ll head down to the Red Bull and pick me up a nice cowboy. Dance a few slow dances, have a couple drinks. And who knows? Maybe I’ll just take him home with me at the end of the evening. I have it on good authority, after all, that I have the perfect little slut dress to entice—”

  He grabbed her arms and hauled her up onto her toes. Thrusting his face close to hers, he snarled, “You’d wear my dress to seduce another guy?”

  “In a red-hot minute, bub. Maybe I won’t bother with underwear this time. That way my new squeeze won’t have to waste time getting to the main event.”

  “The hell you say! No shit-kicking cowboy lays his hands on you. You’re mine.”

  “Your woman.” That was what she’d heard him tell Butch.

  “Damn straight! And nobody touches my woman except—” His face suddenly went blank and he let her go, stepping back. “Oh. Very clever. But it’s not going to work, Dru. Besides, you’d never do that.”

  “Says who? You aren’t going to be here, so why shouldn’t I?”

  “I guess there is no real reason, but I know you, lady. I don’t doubt that somewhere down the road you’ll make love with someone, but you’d never roll right into bed with the first man you saw just because you’re pissed at me.”

  “But sooner or later I will roll into bed with someone’s who’s not you, J.D.” She watched his jaw muscles bunch and flex. “And you don’t like that idea at all, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Why?” She wasn’t sure whom she was torturing more by pursuing this, him or herself. “What do you care? You’re gonna be gone.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you, Dru?” He thrust his hand through his hair and stared at her. “I’ll probably be in jail. Christ, could we possibly be more different? You’ve got your Mayberry U.S.A. life, with your family and your friends who want nothing but the best for you. I’ve got a best friend who wants me dead, and the prospect of hard time. We don’t have a damn thing in common for any kind of lasting relationship.”

  “You are so wrong! God, I’ve never seen a man work so hard to cut himself out of the picture!” Determination replaced her anger. “Just answer me this, okay? What are your feelings for me?”

  Staring at her with shuttered eyes, he stood there without speaking for so long that her heart sank down to her toes. Damn him, he was determined to “save” her from his big bad influence, no matter what.

  To her surprise, he finally said haltingly, “I…care for you.”

  “You care for me,” she repeated. “Like you care for crème brûlée? Or rebuilding broken stuff? Or, no, wait! I’m probably a little more important than either of those. Like you’d care for a puppy, maybe?”

  His eyebrows gathered like storm clouds above his nose. “Like I care for the air I breathe, all right?”

  Yes. Despite his don’t-screw-with-me scowl, her heart began to lift. “Very all right. Though your delivery could stand a little work.” She reached out to trail her fingertips down his forearm. “I love you, John David. Do you love me?”

  “What if I do, Drucilla? It’s not gonna change any—”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Will you listen to me, dammit? It doesn’t make any difference if I do or I don’t—”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes! But it’s more complicated than that—”

  “No. No, it’s not. We love each other, and that’s the bottom line.”

&nb
sp; Shoving his hands into his pants pockets, he hunched his shoulders. “I wish that were true. But the real bottom line is that I have to go back to face the music, and I’ve gotta do it alone.”

  “You don’t, though. You say we’re so different? The only real difference between you and me, J.D., is that I’ve had a support system my entire life and you haven’t. But you have one now.”

  “Dru—”

  “So you made a mistake,” she said, wanting desperately to see some softening in his expression, needing a sign she was getting through to him. “I know the man you are, and so do Tate and Aunt Sophie and Uncle Ben. You don’t deserve to go to jail over this, and we’ll fight it to the Supreme Court if we have to. And if that doesn’t work and you do have to go away, then I’ll simply wait for you to get out.”

  His face went hard. “No,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You won’t. Go back to your life, Drucilla. And leave me to mine.”

  There was no compromise in his eyes, in his voice, and all Dru’s fierce convictions and arguments drained out of her.

  God. Would she never learn? She should know by now that she couldn’t force someone to love her, that she couldn’t compel anyone to stay if he didn’t want to. People had left her behind all her life, no matter how desperately she might yearn otherwise. The sooner she accepted that, the better off everyone would be. She stepped back, her hands dropping limply to her side.

  “I don’t know why I thought you’d be different from everyone else,” she said dispiritedly. “You know what? I give up. Go back to your life, John David.” She studied him one last time, collecting memories for the cold nights to come. Then she sighed, feeling nothing but tired. Tired and worn down to her soul. “I hope it will turn out to be everything you ever wished for.”

  Pivoting on her heel, she headed for the spur trail, leaving him standing in the clearing.

  J.D. stared across at the empty trail head, nausea roiling in his gut. One minute Dru had been looking up at him with those vivid eyes of hers burning with conviction as she’d assured him she’d support him right up to the doors of the Supreme Court, and the next, he found himself standing in front of the cabin all by himself.