Going to the Chapel (3 page)

When he’d gotten the call,
what felt like hours ago now, he had fully prepared himself for the
oddity of the whole incident. He had even prepared himself for the
looker, according to the deputy on the scene. But what Chase hadn’t
been prepared at all for was the wallop of intense, raw lust that
broadsided him the moment he laid eyes on the perpetrator. His
deputy had failed to mention a name. Chase tunneled his fingers
through his hair again and heaved a disgusted breath. He thought he
had gotten over the woman long ago. But the fierce jolt of pain
followed quickly by anger he experienced upon recognizing Caroline
blew that theory all to hell. Even the pain and anger couldn’t seem
to quench the fire that still burned inside him for the one and
only woman he had ever loved.

Her silvery gaze collided
with his and Chase’s gut clenched. Nope, nothing had changed. He
still wanted to throttle her, almost as much as he wanted to kiss
her. Chase forced himself to take the five steps that brought him
within reach of her. He shifted his gaze to the paramedic. “She
check out okay?” He forced his thoughts back to the job, instead of
lacy underwear and sensual lips.

“
Yeah,” Roger replied when
he looked up. “She’s a little shaken, but nothing to be concerned
about.”

Chase nodded. “Good.” He
turned to her, but kept his gaze a fraction above those haunting
eyes. “Miss Gregory—”

“
Don’t be so formal,
Chase,” she chastised softly. The weariness in her voice tugged at
his protective instincts.

“
Caroline,” he relented,
then ruthlessly squashed the desire to shield her from all
unpleasantries. “I noticed the open champagne bottle in your car.
I’ll need you to submit to a blood-alcohol test.” Her eyes widened
with apprehension, and maybe a little surprise. “It’s standard
operating procedure, Miss—Caroline.”

“
I told you that I’d been
drinking,” she protested. “I had three or four glasses. But I
wasn’t driving. I was parked.” She turned and pointed shakily to
the rise up the road. “On that little hill. I parked first, then
opened the bottle.” Her last words trembled past those kissable,
pouty red lips.

Chase’s gaze traced the
path of destruction through the grassy meadow, then moved back to
her luminous eyes. He suppressed the renewed rush of protectiveness
that surged inside him at her vulnerability then and now. Hell, it
was a miracle she hadn’t been seriously injured.

“
I’ll take that as a yes,”
he said, ignoring the lingering need to console her. Every
irresponsible driver always had an excuse. Even a breathtakingly
beautiful one with who he had once been in love. Cursing himself
for dwelling on the past, Chase shifted his attention back to the
paramedic. “You can handle that?”

“
Sure.” Roger reached into
his case for the necessary paraphernalia.

“
Oh, God,” Caroline
murmured.

Chase caught her by the arm
when she swayed. His body tightened at the feel of her smooth skin
beneath his fingers, and that annoyed the hell out of him. “Maybe
you’d like to sit in one of the cruisers?” he suggested, irritation
with himself making his words curt.

Caroline blinked, then
shook her head and pulled out of his grasp. “I’m fine. I
just—”

“
Sheriff, I think you’ll
want to hear this,” Deputy Manning called over the grumble of the
tow truck pulling forward with its load. More of the chapel’s
nearly two-century-old wood siding tumbled to the ground. Caroline
jerked at the sound.

“
I’ll take her out to the
truck,” Roger offered.

“
Good. Thanks, Roger.”
Chase’s attention had moved to the ominous tone in his deputy’s
voice. He strode to where his deputy waited. “What’s
up?”

Excitement sparkled in his
young deputy’s eyes. “Everything about where she lives and works
checks out,” Jess Manning said in a stage whisper. “But here’s the
kicker—” he paused for effect “—that fancy sports car she’s driving
is stolen.”

Chase rubbed the bridge of
his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The beginnings of a
headache stabbed right between his eyes. “Stolen?” That was crazy.
Caroline wasn’t a thief. He had known her all his life. But a lot
could change in eight years, the lawman in him argued.

Jess pushed his cap up and
scanned his note pad once more. “Yes sir. It was reported about one
a.m. this morning by a Dr. Tristan Rodgers of St.
Louis.”

“
Damn.” Chase rubbed a hand
over his unshaven face. He had been in the shower when the call had
come, there had been no time for a shave. He blew out a breath of
frustration. “Let me see what Miss Gregory has to say about that.”
He glanced toward the paramedic’s truck and the woman who had
haunted his dreams for too long.

Caroline Gregory had a hell
of a lot of explaining to do.

Chapter Two

Caroline parted with the
required blood sample, then leaned her head against the cracked
vinyl upholstery of the paramedic’s truck. She was exhausted from
lack of sleep and jittery with adrenaline from the accident, not to
mention the emotional trauma of the night before. The full
ramifications of her predicament were only now sinking
in.

She had taken Tristan’s car
and crashed it into an irreplaceable historic structure. In her
haste, Caroline had fled her own wedding only to ruin someone
else’s. Not to mention she had made an absolute fool of herself in
front of Chase Garrett. She cringed inwardly. Hadn’t she been a
fool for him one time too many already?

Damn. Why couldn’t she have
crashed Tristan’s car in some other small town? She didn’t want to
see Chase. She didn’t want to talk to him. And she sure didn’t want
to want him. But that old feeling of intense need had been
instantaneous, breath-stealing. Caroline’s insides trembled with
lingering reaction. Today was supposed to be her wedding
day,
to another man
. Instead of wedding bells, a desire as familiar as her own
name was jangling through her veins. How could she feel this?
Especially about a man who had been just as unfaithful to her as
Tristan had.

Caroline wanted to close
her eyes and block the whole thing out, but each time her lids
closed Chase’s reaction to seeing her replayed. Shocked disbelief,
hurt, then an obvious jolt of anger. He sure as hell had no right
to be angry. She was the one who should be angry. She wilted,
defeated. But somehow she couldn’t manage the full range of the
emotion.

Her whole, perfectly
orchestrated life had just gone down the tubes. She stared unseeing
at the yellowed dome light overhead. Why did this have to happen to
her? Today of all days? Hadn’t she been through enough in the last
twenty-four hours? Grandma Colleen was surely turning over in her
grave. She had always warned Caroline that the grass wasn’t greener
on the other side of the fence. That big city life was not all it
was cracked up to be.
Follow your heart,
little girl
.
Trust
your instincts
. Caroline had done neither.
She had turned down a full scholarship from Vanderbilt and headed
for St. Louis. Luckily, she’d gotten a similar offer from another
university. She’d finished medical school in record time and
entered that terrifying world of colliding egos—internship.
Eventually an offer from Mercy Hospital in St. Louis had come along
and then she’d met Tristan.

How in the world had that
journey brought her back here?

Little doubt existed in her
mind that her blood-alcohol level would not be within the legal
limits, and she had smashed a hole in the side of the most famous
building in this part of the state. What was worse, she couldn’t
prove that she hadn’t plowed right through the place in a drunken
stupor. There were no witnesses. Soon everyone in town would be
privy to the morning’s escapades. Caroline swallowed the swell of
tears in her throat. None of this would have happened
if...

Damn Tristan and his
infidelity.

Damn Chase Garrett, too.
Her lips trembled. Caroline clenched her teeth to control what
wasn’t quite the anger she wanted desperately to feel. She wanted
to be as mad as hell at life, at Tristan...at Chase. Instead, she
was only angry with herself. And disappointed, a little voice
added. Grandma Colleen would be, too. An old ache shimmered through
her. She had truly, completely screwed up her entire life. For the
first time she was glad her grandmother wasn’t around to see the
mess she had made.

“
Caroline.” Chase’s deep
masculine voice intruded on her self-pity session. That slow,
southern drawl flowed over her like warm honey, making her
shiver.

Caroline cleared her throat
and quickly straightened in the seat. “Yes?” When her gaze
connected with his piercing blue eyes, she shivered one more time.
She had never met anyone else with eyes quite that clear, that
knowing.

Giving herself a mental
shake, she looked away. She shouldn’t be thinking like that. He had
betrayed her eight years ago. He had broken her heart in a way that
Tristan never could. But, she was long over Chase Garrett. In
outright defiance of her mental pronouncement, a wistful yearning
tumbled through Caroline. What was wrong with her? Shock. She
blinked at the realization. A sudden, disconnected feeling sucked
at her gauzy thin composure. Drawing in a deep, shaky breath to
calm herself, she fought the urge to curl into the fetal position.
You need your head on straight here, girl. She glanced up at Chase
again.
Especially with
him
.

“
I’ll need you to come down
to the office with me.”

A frown creased her brow as
she studied his too familiar face in hopes of reading what was on
his mind. There had been a time when she could tell exactly what he
was thinking. But that time had passed. “I know you don’t believe
me, but I was not driving. I was parked.”

Chase braced his muscled
forearms on the cab of the truck and leaned in closer. “We’ll
discuss the issue in my office.” That searing gaze burned into hers
making her feel even more uncertain. “You’re not going to give me a
hard time about this, are you?”

How could he still inflict
such havoc with her senses? Mile-wide shoulders filled the truck’s
open door and separated her from the rest of the scene going on
around them. The masculinity he exuded crowded her, made her want
to run as fast as she could in any direction so long as it took her
away from him. Chase Garrett had grown into a strong, powerful
looking man. He was even better looking now than eight years
ago...

God, why did she notice
that?

But, Caroline decided,
trying to shift her focus to some obvious fault rather than his
numerous assets, he didn’t dress like any sheriff she had ever met.
Certainly not like his daddy, Garrett County’s sheriff before him.
Or his granddaddy, the law in Lucy’s Branch before that. Chase wore
faded jeans, a plain white cotton tee and sneakers. His unruly
black hair hadn’t seen a pair of barber’s scissors in far too long.
And that beard-shadowed jaw lent a slightly dangerous quality to
his appearance. The sexuality he radiated didn’t help either, and
it was much more intense than Caroline remembered.

The only way that anyone
would know Chase was an officer of the law, she considered,
concluding her visual assessment, was the badge clipped at his
waist and the weapon tucked at the small of his back.

Caroline squeezed her eyes
shut and tried to dispel the image that did nothing to lessen her
trepidation. “Why do I have to go to your office, Chase?” she asked
softly, too exhausted to put any real inflection in her tone. “Are
you charging me with something?”

“
I’m not sure
yet.”

Surprised, she stared up at
him. Heat rushed through her at the realization of just how close
he was. Closer even than before. His face seemed only inches away
now. “I don’t understand,” she managed in spite of his
proximity.

“
That makes two of us.
Maybe there’s something else you’d like to tell me about your
activities last night?”

Confusion skittered through
her at the suspicion that laced his tone. “What exactly do you
mean?”

One dark eyebrow arched
sardonically. “You
borrowed
this car from your boyfriend?”

Uh-oh. Caroline moistened
her lips nervously. She had forgotten all about Tristan’s reporting
the car stolen. She was a thief on top of everything else. What
Chase must think of her. Self-disgust mushroomed like a nuclear
blast. She kicked it aside. And why should she care? She almost
laughed out loud. Somewhere there had to be humor in all this, but
right now she couldn’t see it.

“
Well,
sheriff
,” she said, essaying a dim
smile. Could things possibly get any worse? “Perhaps borrowed was a
poor choice in words, but I can explain.”

He smiled then, a slow,
crooked, too familiar gesture that sent a serious tremor through
her limbs. “I’m sure you can,
Miss
Gregory
, but I’m afraid you’ll have to do
it at the office.” He extended one long-fingered hand.