Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

“Just a minute.” Meeker turned back to his cruiser. Shivering, Jules grabbed her jacket from the passenger seat, slipped her arms through the sleeves, and hastily zipped it. Too late. Her insides felt like ice, and she turned her car on again, cranking up the heater as she found an old pair of knit gloves in her pockets and pulled them on just as she heard the rumbling sound of an engine in the distance. She looked toward the sound and spied headlights cutting through the darkness on the far side of the gate.

Her ride.

A Jeep appeared through the curtain of snow, slowing at the window of the gatehouse. Rolling down his window, the Jeep’s driver slowed to talk to the officer in the gatehouse. A moment later, the gate swung open and the Jeep rolled through, headlights heading straight for her. The Jeep wheeled to a sliding stop next to her car, and the door popped open. Jules turned casually to look at the driver, and her heart sank. Something about his profile seemed familiar.

Jules’s heart clutched as she squinted against the swirling snow.

She told herself she was imagining things. She had to be.

Cooper Trent was not crossing the parking lot!

Not in a million years.

Her tired, distraught mind was just playing tricks on her.

Nonetheless, her heart was trip-hammering, her pulse jumping, her nerves strung to the breaking point.

It was just her subconscious dragging him up again as it did in her nightmares, or her headache giving her eyestrain.

He was out of her life.

As in forever.

Right?

It couldn’t be.

No way, no how.

But no amount of denial could erase the fact that Cooper Trent now stood outside her car, looking better than any man had a right to look and acting as if the past five years were just a heartbeat.

Gone were the dusty chaps, ratty old Stetson, and cocky cowboy grin. Instead he wore faded Levi’s, a pair of worn boots, and a sheepskin jacket. Bareheaded, snow collecting in his hair, he stared downward.

Her foolish heart knocked.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded through the open window.

He hesitated a second, glanced over his shoulder to make sure the deputy couldn’t hear him, then met her gaze again. “You know, Jules,” he drawled in a low voice she’d once found so sexy it had turned her inside out, “that’s just what I was gonna ask you.”

CHAPTER 18

Jules decided that the nightmare had just taken a turn for the worse. What were the odds? Out of the billions of people in the world, how did she end up face-to-face with the one man she’d never wanted to see again?

So God did have a sense of humor after all.

And a wicked one at that.

“You know why I’m here,” Jules said. “Someone—probably Dean Hammersley—sent you to get me.”

“That she did. And that’s when she dropped the bomb that you were the new history teacher.”

“Perfect,” she said with sarcasm as bitter as the wind chasing down the mountainside.

“And the funny thing about that,” Trent observed, “is, I’ve already got a job here.”

“Yeah, real funny,” she said. “You’re not listed on the Web site.”

“They’re updating. I’m the newest person on staff. Well, I was until you showed up.”