Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

managed to form – what the hell was this?  An attachment? An obsession?  God help him, an actual relationship? – with a woman he met on the beach?  And not just any woman, either.

A woman with a kid.

A really super-terrific kid, whose smile was almost as appealing as his mother’s.

It was one hell of a package deal.

Whoa, Nellie.  He put a rein on those horses before he found himself flattened by the pitter-patter of little hooves.  There were absolutely, positively no deals to be made here, because he had nothing to bring to the table.  He lived in another state. And his job kept him on the road nearly four days out of seven.

Not to mention the fact that he was a confirmed… well, womanizer wasn’t exactly the word.  That indicated that he lacked respect for women, which he didn’t.  He genuinely admired and liked women.  He liked a lot of women. And in general the feeling was reciprocal.

There was absolutely no room in his life for any type of commitment.

“Shit!”  Clay almost drove his truck off the Cooper River Bridge when that traitorous thought entered his head. Not that he was afraid of commitment.  Exactly.  Hell, he’d had relationships before, hadn’t he?

But not after a few days’ acquaintance. And not with a woman who came as part of a set.

Cringing, he vividly recalled busting Justin’s brother Jordan’s chops quite recently for pretty much the same thing.

“Christ, Copeland.”  Clay scrubbed his hand over his face and tried to think.  What had he consumed today that had turned his mind to mush?  It must have been that last, high-intensity spin on the Tilt-O-Whirl, combined with a boatload of sugar and saturated fat that had managed to pickle his brain.

Of course, it hadn’t impaired his second most highly functioning organ, which even now was protesting the fact that he’d done the decent thing and tried to make love to Tate inside.  If he’d kept his big mouth shut, he probably could have opened his fly, adjusted her position by a couple inches, and had this whole little dilemma taken care of.

Right now he’d be driving home physically sated, thinking clearly, and… feeling like a total jerk.

Tate was simply too special to be treated like a piece of… hell, he couldn’t even think it.  Putting her name and ass in the same sentence made him want to punch his own face.

There was an edge here, and he was walking dangerously close to it.  And whatever lay on the other side was scary as hell.

Deciding that he really, really needed to get some sleep, he pulled his vehicle in beside Justin’s, a little cheered that his friend was home.  If he didn’t have to work tomorrow night, they’d go out and paint the town red.

Clay opened the back door, which Justin had thoughtfully left unlatched, and wandered in to find his friend sprawled on the leather sofa.  He was stripped down to his underwear again – boxer shorts, this time, at least – and watching the evening news.  He looked dazed and a little groggy.

Justin looked him over skeptically.  “What the hell happened to you? You look like you came out on the losing end of a food fight.”

Until then, Clay honestly hadn’t noticed how much crap his clothes had accumulated.  He was smeared with ketchup, chocolate, dust, grease and God knew what else. Plus he had the strange and sudden certainty that there was something lodged between his front teeth.

Shit.  Had that been there when he’d been kissing Tate?  No wonder she’d told him to get out.

“Carnival food,” Clay explained, as he crashed into the recliner.  He noticed there was gum stuck to the toe of his left shoe.

Justin raised one dark brow.  “Was it worth it?”

If you called a bad case of indigestion, a fortune spent to win a stupid purple bear, a nice foray into the complexities of trying to seduce a woman while in the presence of her young son, not to mention a brief stopover into everyone’s favorite nightmare – child abduction – worthwhile, he guessed he hadn’t come away empty handed.

Then he thought about the feel of Tate’s soft lips as they raced over his, and the look on Max’s face when he’d called him his deputy.

And the way his stupid frickin’ heart had swelled all out of proportion when he’d walked – just walked – holding both of their hands.

He’d gotten more out of the day then he’d bargained.

“It was fun,” he told Justin with a shrug.

Being a guy, Justin considered the subject dropped and pushed the volume button up on the remote.

Just before the sports could be recapped, an aggressively groomed brunette with a microphone filled the screen.  A large Ferris wheel dominated the background, spinning gaily amidst a blinking array of lights.  Clay sat mesmerized, a sinking feeling beginning to pull at his already abused stomach.  He did a little mental cataloguing, filing this under Things That Did Not Bode Well.

He just knew that woman was going to find a way to drag him into this.

He sat rigidly as the reporter began talking.

“Traveling carnivals are as ubiquitous to the American landscape as baseball and apple pie.  But tonight, this slice of Americana set the stage for tragedy, as thirteen-year-old Casey Rodriguez disappeared from the area surrounding this Ferris wheel right behind me, where she’d been waiting for a family member to finish the ride.  Law enforcement officials on the scene – which included local sheriff’s deputies and an FBI agent – have declined comment, explaining that their investigation into the girl’s disappearance is still pending.  However, sources close to the investigation have indicated that there is suspicion of foul play. Volunteer search teams have fanned out tonight in the woods and fields surrounding the fairgrounds, hoping to find some clue that might lead to the discovery of the lost teen’s whereabouts.”

Here, the camera panned to show several policemen and volunteers on the scene, and then cut to some earlier footage that included Casey Rodriguez’s