Uncommon Passion (2 page)

“Five hundred,” came a voice from the back of the tent, but that figure disappeared in a flurry of

bidding. Jess was in the thick of it, until the amount shot into four figures. Then she sat back in her chair

and brushed dirt from her jeans as the winner pushed through the crowd to claim her prize, an exultant,

victorious smile on her face. There was a whisper of bitterness in Jess’s gaze as it skimmed over the heels,

the flirty sundress, the sleek hair and nails, but she congratulated the winner when Rob escorted her back to

the cashier’s table.

“All right, ladies, the final bachelor of the night was supposed to be Brian Rogers, brother of our first

bachelor, the Lazy R’s owner, Troy. But Brian is a member of the Galveston Police Department, and he had

to work tonight so Officer Ben Harris has graciously agreed to stand in for him.”

The audience offered a round of applause that managed to be both appreciative and flirtatious at the

same time. Harris walked into the circle of bales and gave the audience that flashing smile and a short nod.

Rachel noted the increase in chatter, the energy spiking in the room. The object of this speculation stood in

the center of the spotlight, arms folded across his chest, gaze flicking from face to face as he took in the

scene.

Then that smile flicked off and on again. Rachel followed his gaze to the back of the crowd, where a

dark-haired woman who’d already purchased one bachelor stood, a bottle of hard lemonade held languidly

by her shoulder. A feline smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she considered Officer Harris. Rachel

looked back at the cop and saw the merest shadow of a wink flicker in his eyelid.

Rachel leaned over to Jess. “What do you think?” she asked.

Jess matched Rachel’s low tone. “I recognize him. He works security at No Limits, a bar in Galveston,

and when he’s not breaking up fights in the parking lot, he’s using the uniform to get laid. Plus he’s got an

honest-to-God cleft in his chin,” she said. “He’s bad news.”

So the most overtly masculine slice of humanity she’d ever seen in her life was bad news. That was

good news for her.

Like most twentysomethings, Rachel had a
What Now?
list, but unlike other women her age, her list

started with basics like
get a driver’s license
and
get a car.
She’d ticked off both items several months

earlier. Once she realized how computers and smartphones ran the outside world,
get a computer
and
get a

phone
had jumped to the top of the list.
Find a job
and
find a place to live
still needed some work—she

was still farming, still sharing a room.

The list’s biggest items—
get transcripts from state
and
apply to veterinary technician school
—were in

progress. Okay, so they were stalled. The email sat in her Drafts folder with the application attached and

ready to send. Something about taking that particular step scared her. She was getting better at allowing

herself to feel, which certainly helped her identify what she felt. Knowing
why
she felt and how to handle it

was something she could only learn through experience.

Jess stood to accept payment from one of the few women in the tent not focused on Officer Harris. An

envelope in her back pocket snagged on the back of the folding chair. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Jess said, then

handed the envelope to Rachel. “This was in today’s mail.”

Rachel accepted the letter without comment. Yet another letter with RETURN TO SENDER written on

the envelope in her father’s neat block printing. Over thirty letters written, one a week since Rachel left

Elysian Fields Community of God, the isolated religious commune where she’d lived her entire life. She

mailed one every Monday, three or four pages containing details about her new life, humorous anecdotes

about her days at Silent Circle Farm. How she felt. Who she was becoming away from the only life she’d

ever known. The ending was always the same.

I still love you, Dad. I still want to be your daughter. Please write me back.

Love, Rachel

She didn’t say she was sorry for what she’d done, because she wasn’t. Her unrepentant attitude didn’t

matter, because he had yet to read a single letter, let alone write her back. She breathed through the

sensation dancing along her nerves until she could name it. Rejection, identifiable by its sting and the way it

halted her breathing for a second. Thirty-plus letters into her new life, and she still felt hurt. The emotion

was far too familiar, the price she paid for leaving the secure world of Elysian Fields. Nothing assuaged it.

She’d tried nearly everything the world had to offer: a variety of ethnic food, rich desserts saturated with

sugar and chocolate, movies she’d never seen, music she’d never heard, books she’d never read. While the

sensory overload occasionally distracted her, it never quite banished the sorrow of her only surviving

parent’s rejection.

You rejected him first.

Rachel sat back and tuned in to the auctioneer’s banter.

“All right, ladies, I know you’re anxious to get to the shopping, but there’s one more man up for sale

tonight. Dig deep into those purses to benefit Gulf Coast Harvest Co-op and all the good work they’re doing

to promote organic farming in the region. Nothing better than a man in uniform.”

“Sure there is,” Officer Harris said.

Laughter rocked the tent, the switch in energy eddying at Rachel. Her body got it before her brain did.

Heat trickled down her spine, then a blush flared in her cheeks. When it came to sexual innuendos, she was

usually a step or two behind. She watched Officer Harris scan the women unconsciously pushing closer to

the ring of hay bales, his blue eyes dancing with a private amusement, that scythe of a smile pulling at one

corner of his mouth. An unbidden thought rose to the surface of her mind.

The list holds one thing the world has to offer that you haven’t tried.

“There you have it, ladies,” Leanne said smoothly. “Who’ll start the bidding for me?”

“Eight hundred,” came from the raven-haired woman in the back.

“Wow,” Jess said. Rachel had to agree. Three of the other ten bachelors had gone for less than that,

including the bidder’s first prize.

“What
exactly
am I bidding on?” the woman added archly.

Harris’s smile flashed through the laughter. “Does it matter?”

Heads turned, like two hundred people were watching a tennis match. “I’ll let you know afterward,” she

said.

“Nine hundred,” came from another woman.

“One thousand.”

“I’ll take that thousand,” Leanne said, “but hold on a minute, ladies. Let’s find out exactly what Officer

Harris is offering.”

“I’m just filling in for Troy, so I’ll follow through on whatever he set up,” Harris said. He didn’t have to

lean toward the mike. His voice carried effortlessly through the tent.

Leanne glanced at her phone. “Officer Rogers offered dinner for two at Gaido’s and an evening at the

Pleasure Pier.”

“Sounds great to me,” Harris said.

“And me,” the black-haired woman said. “Eleven.”

“You’ve already bought one man!” another woman called from the crowd.

“I can handle it,” she said, her gaze never wavering from Harris’s.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said.

Rachel heard the words as clear as a bell in her head.
Him. He’s perfect for what you need.

The bidding war climbed by fifties to fifteen hundred, but when flirtatious bidder upped her offer by

two hundred dollars, the other woman shook her head in defeat.

“Going once,” Leanne said.

Rachel’s heart thrummed in her chest. She’d already done the hard part. A date with Officer Harris

would be easy, because he’d make it easy, a rakishly charming good time from beginning to end. All she

had to do was
buy him
.

The weight of four pages and a business envelope pressed against her back pocket. When she left, she’d

never imagined her father would stay angry with her. She was his only child, the apple of his eye, and while

he had every right to be angry, she’d thought after a few weeks, he would relent and at least keep the letters.

There was no going back. Officer Harris caught her eye. The smile he gave her, the smile she’d mentally

dubbed his
Sure I can
smile, flashed at her, part mocking, part amused, part something her brain didn’t

recognize but her body sure did. Heat zinged along her nerves, straight through the ball of lead in her

abdomen.

Oh.

If you want to cross something off the list, submit your vet tech school application.

No. Do this.

“Going twice,” Leanne said, a warning lilt in her voice.

“Two thousand dollars.”

Rachel’s voice silenced all chatter in the tent. Stares landed like the humidity before a storm on her face,

bare of any makeup, on her hair, held back from her face in a thick French braid, on her simple outfit of

jeans and a scoop-necked T-shirt representing Silent Circle Farm, but her gaze never left Ben Harris’s.

Leanne smoothly kept up her patter. “Two thousand, I have two thousand for a night with Officer

Harris. Do I hear twenty-one?” she asked.

Rachel didn’t need to turn around to see the response. It was in the way Leanne straightened her back in

anticipation of the final bid in the final auction of the night, in Ben Harris’s smile.

“Sold!”

A loud round of applause swept through the crowd, covering Leanne’s final comments. Rachel made

her way through all those people to lay claim to trouble, and did what every other winning bidder had done

that evening. She reached for his hand.

“Don’t touch me while I’m in uniform.”

She froze, then his palm settled warm and hard on her shoulder, his fingers splayed to her collarbone as

he guided her not to the table where she’d make payment but back through the crowd, into the darkness of

the parking lot. They left behind the noise and clamor of women released to shop, and headed for the truck

he’d stepped out of only ten minutes earlier.

His hand didn’t drop from her shoulder until they reached the vehicle. He leaned back against the

driver’s door and considered her.

“Two large?” he said, his demeanor back to cocky flirt. “I don’t know if I can live up to that.”

Two large what? “I have no doubt you will,” she said.

That smile again, the one with so many layers it hid more than it revealed, flashed on, then off,

distracting her from her impending heart attack. What was it about that smile? It was somehow arrogant and

inviting and hands-off, all at the same time, with an edge underneath it she couldn’t quite place.

A silence fell, awkward with the laughter and chatter in the background. He studied her in a way that

made her lift her chin and look right back. He couldn’t tell. There was no way for him to tell just by looking

at her.

“We better set this up now.”

“Good idea,” she said. “We’re open late on Friday nights but we close at six on Saturdays.”

“I can’t do either,” he said.

“We’re closed on Sundays,” she offered. Sundays, which used to be her favorite day of the week, were

now her most difficult day. Rather than spending the entire day in church, she wrote to her father on

Sundays, knowing that she’d mail the letter on Monday only to see it returned on Saturday.

“I’ll pick you up at six,” he said.

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” she said hastily. The farm lay along a river valley a good ways outside town.

“I’ve got some things to do in Galveston. I’ll run errands and meet you at Gaido’s.”

“For two grand, I should give you a ride.”

She’d spent enough time listening to Jess flirt with the Texas A&M boys to know how to answer that.

“I’ll count on one
after
dinner,” she said.

His gaze, focused on entering the date into the calendar on his phone, flicked up to hers, and that smile,

that wicked dangerous smile, flashed again.

“Maybe I don’t go that far,” he said, an odd, teasing lilt in his voice.

Her mouth dropped open in shock.

He gave an amused huff. “Don’t worry. I go that far. What’s your name?”

“Rachel Hill,” she said.

“Phone number in case something comes up.”

She rattled off her digits and entered his into her phone. Their phones lit up their faces, giving the

whole scene an eerie, unreal glow until the thunder rumbled again, and lightning lit up the sky.

Unconcerned, he thumbed away at the keyboard with more dexterity than she did.

Catching her completely by surprise, he cupped her jaw, then kissed her cheek. She froze as heat and

light danced under her skin.

“See you Sunday,” he murmured.

Rachel stepped back as he got into the pickup, cranked the engine, and swiftly backed out of the lot.

Dust lifted in his wake, swirling in the hot night air as she turned and walked back into the tent.