surprised the stubborn old guy had admitted it even to himself, let alone Jake. That must have been Tuttle’s version of bad news: being wrong.
“What should you have listened to me about?” Jake asked, holding back his “I told you so” until he knew the specifics.
“The Davies family.” Tuttle uttered the last name as if it was a vulgar curse word.
Jake flinched at just the mention of it, and a twinge of pain clenched his heart, stealing away his breath and his words. He couldn’t speak.
But Tuttle didn’t stop talking. He rarely did. His wide mouth was nearly as big as his short body. “You told me not to bail out another one of them.” He shook his little bald head in self-disgust. “You warned me that they always run.”
Jake’s pulse was running now in overtime. He didn’t want to think about the Davies family, didn’t want to think about what he’d done, the extremes he’d gone to the last time that he’d had to apprehend two of them.
“Why aren’t you saying it?” Tuttle demanded as he stopped in front of him.
Jake blinked and stared down at the little man. Tuttle was barely five feet tall to Jake’s well over six-foot height. “Saying what?”
“I told you so,” Tuttle said. “You were right. I paid the bail and now you need to go bring back another damn Davies for me.”
Jake shook his head and ran a slightly shaking hand through his thick hair. He needed a haircut. But then he always needed a haircut. “Not me. That’s not going to happen.”
“You’re the expert on the Davies family,” Tuttle persisted. “You know where to find them.”
“In jail,” Jake said. “That’s where most of them are.” He couldn’t believe Don or Dave would have gotten bail again after jumping it last time. And if a judge had been stupid enough to give it to them, Seymour had been even stupider to pay it. “I told you so” wasn’t enough recrimination for risking his money on one of them again.
“Not her,” Seymour said.
And Jake’s blood froze in his veins, sending a chill straight to his soul. “What?”
Tuttle paced around his desk, pulled out his chair and plopped down onto it. The metal desk was old and scratched up. His leather chair was more duct tape than leather. The bail bondsman liked money, but he didn’t like spending it. Leafing through a sheaf of papers on his desk, he held up a mug shot. “Her. I thought she was different than the rest of them. She has no record. No prior arrests at all. That’s the only reason the judge granted her bail. That’s why I posted it, even though I know you warned me not to.”
He trailed off as if waiting for Jake to say something—anything—but Jake was too stunned. He couldn’t move as shock gripped him. Seymour couldn’t be talking about...
Not Lillian.
But she was the only female Davies now. Her mother had passed away when Lillian was eighteen, leaving her with her degenerate father, three older brothers and one younger one.
“Her trial was supposed to start Monday,” Seymour said, “but she never showed up for court.”
Trial. For what? What the hell was going on?
Jake’s spine stiffened. He shot away from the door to grab the mug shot from Tuttle’s hand. As he stared down at the photo, myriad emotions passed through him.
Guilt. He’d felt that for the past eight months every time he had thought of her, which had been always. She had never left his mind. He remembered how devastated she had looked that last time he’d seen her, how her beautiful blue eyes had been dark with betrayal and pain. She’d thought he’d used her. And he had. That had been his plan all along, to get close to her to find out where her dad and brother Dave were hiding, but then something else had happened to him.
Desire. He hadn’t planned on that, hadn’t plotted to get as close to her as he had gotten. But he’d wanted Lillian Davies more than he’d ever wanted any woman. With her shimmery pale blond hair and deep blue eyes, she was stunningly beautiful. And sweet. She had acted and tasted so damn sweet. Her kisses had gone straight to his head and desire had gone to his groin. He hadn’t been able to resist her. And he’d nearly forgotten all about apprehending her dad and eldest brother.
Maybe that had been her plan, though. Maybe she had known all along who he really was and she’d set out to seduce him into forgetting about the bounties on her brother and father.
Anger. He felt it now as he stared down at her mug shot. He could barely look at her beautiful face, and she was still beautiful—even with dark circles rimming her eyes. He looked instead at the charge printed on the photo: embezzlement. She must have played him, just like she had everyone else. Her boss, the judge and the bail bondsman. Lily-white Lillian Davies was anything but. She was a con artist just like the rest of her criminal family.
“I know, I know,” Tuttle said. “You told me that if I bailed one of them out again, that you didn’t want to hear about it, that you wanted nothing to do with any of them again. But...”
Jake had been adamant about that because he hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to face her again—because he’d felt so damn guilty over hurting her.
He’d staged their whole cute first meeting, literally bumping into her in the grocery store. She’d apologized when their carts had collided, even though he’d deliberately plowed his into hers. Somehow he had sweet-talked her into dinner and then he’d made it for her.
All he had been after was information on her dad and brother Dave. But he’d gotten so much more...
Had he seduced her, though? Or had it been the other way around?
“I’ll call one of the O’Hanigans to bring her in instead,” Tuttle offered.
“No!” was Jake’s sharp retort as some emotion even uglier than anger coursed through him. Was it jealousy? He’d never felt such a sick, twisty feeling in his stomach before. He didn’t want Lillian seducing one of the O’Hanigans like she’d seduced him.
No, if she was going to seduce anyone...
Images flitted through his mind, like they did every night when he tried to sleep. Images of her lying naked in his bed, her silky skin flushed with desire, her lips parted on a husky moan.
No. She wasn’t going to seduce him this time. He would not be conned twice. He’d spent the past eight months hating himself for making her hate him. He’d felt guilty and remorseful because he’d hurt her.
And she’d probably been laughing at him—as she stole money just like her brother and father had. She’d been laughing at him and her hapless trusting employer.
She wasn’t going to get away with it.
Not this time.
She wasn’t going to elude justice.
This was why he had resigned from the US Marshals and gone into business for himself as a bounty hunter. The US Marshals didn’t have the time or the resources to bring back all the fugitives from justice. So Jake had taken it upon himself
