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  Dry Spell

  Copyright © 2014 by D.L. Jackson

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-689-2

  Cover art by Tibbs Designs

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

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  www.decadentpublishing.com/

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  Courtesan Boot Camp

  Finding Mercy

  Dry Spell

  A Prepper Romance

  By

  D.L. Jackson

  ~Dedication~

  To those who face down the storm, whatever it might be.

  Chapter One

  “You have the right to remain silent.” Sheriff Jake North pushed Gina over the hood of his car and pulled her hands behind her back, slapping the cuffs on one wrist and then the other. Her skirt rode up to barely legal, where cheek almost showed. He kicked her right cowboy boot, spreading her feet wider.

  Since that book was released months before, every woman in the county had tried to get into his handcuffs, Gina Levitt included. And he’d been a good boy. God knew he’d behaved. Warnings, tickets, and not a second glance at anything they’d flaunted. Until now, when temptation got the better of him.

  “See anything you like, Sheriff?” She shifted her hips and went from barely legal to moving violation.

  He was a man, not a saint. Okay, she wanted to play, he’d play.

  Trick question? Gina gave men whiplash when she walked by. Legs stretching to the sky, a tiny waist, and a double serving of breasts, and like the other red-blooded men in Evans Point, he had no immunity to the curves under what little clothing she’d chosen to wear.

  She knew it.

  He knew it.

  Why pretend otherwise?

  “What didn’t I see?” Understatement. The woman might as well be driving around naked.

  “Mmm. I’m willing to show you.”

  “I’ll bet.” Three in the afternoon and not a vehicle in sight on the highway outside of town. He glanced up at the sky. Dark, an ugly olive. Everyone with any common sense took shelter from the threatening storm and, if he possessed any, he’d call off this playdate and seek the safety of his basement. Only idiots would be out in weather like this.

  But, wearing a skirt a little too short, neckline a little too low, and no panties…the woman had run that stop sign just to get his attention. Well, she succeeded, from the moment she’d slid out of her car and made sure he got a good look at what she didn’t have on under her itty-bitty skirt. He’d ignored her for weeks, but her little display he couldn’t disregard. “So are you going to arrest me?” She wiggled her ass, and he put his hand on her posterior to still her.

  With her doing that, he couldn’t think. “Is that what you want, Gina?”

  “Quit playing hard to get, Jake. You know what I want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to cop a plea. Make a deal.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “You cop a plea to the court. In my world, we call your suggestion attempting to bribe an officer of the law.”

  “Whatever.” She shoved her ass back into his groin. “Seems like you’re not opposed to the idea.”

  He gave her backside a hard slap.

  Gina jumped. “Hey, unnecessary roughness.”

  “That’s in football.” He sighed. “Call it police brutality.”

  “Oh, okay. I’d like some more of that. But don’t leave a bruise, ’k?”

  Seriously? Did he really want a chick this stupid? He could have ignored her little rolling stop, as nobody but him, a herd of cattle, and a couple of prairie dogs, witnessed her traffic violation, and he understood her motive. How many times in the last month had he pried her off his tackle while he tried to play pool with his buddies?

  The whole situation screamed bad idea—another relationship with a shallow woman. Gina might be fun to take for a spin, but he didn’t think he could handle anything beyond a one-time roll in bed with her. And after her relentless pursuit, she would want more. She’d upped the ante with her blatant defiance of the law and worn his resistance down.

  After two years, Sheriff Jake North was about to break his dry spell.

  So why entertain the idea? He’d kept to himself for two long years since his girl ran off with that biker. One heck of a long time to go without sex. Gina offered him his chance all but wrapped up with a bow. He ran a hand up her skirt, stroking the silky skin of her outer thigh. A little harmless fun. He’d just gotten off duty and started for home, when he encountered her. Three things summed Gina up. Willing, single, and not hard on the eyes.

  And those fucking boots. Where the hell did she find cowboy boots that came up over her knees? He had the urge to take her riding, with her boots on. How did she know they were a weakness? Who cared? They worked.

  Jake gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. His nostrils flared as the sweet scent of her perfume invaded his every reasonable thought, draining the fight out of him. His hand inched higher. Once didn’t make a marriage, and she put it out there.

  Just as his cock was about to win the argument, fate intervened. Boom, boom, boom. Music pulsed as a vehicle approached. Jake yanked his hand off Gina’s leg and snapped around to watch a Rubicon fly by. Men broke land-speed records with less gusto. The way they drove, one would think they raced a Porsche down the highway.

  An impressive vehicle, the driver would almost need a stepladder to climb into the Jeep, which bore New York plates. Music loud enough to hear two counties over blasted from a serious stereo system but wasn’t what had him pressing the key to his cuffs into Gina’s hand.

  He’d just counted the seconds the speeder took to go from one pole on the power line to the next. Estimate, ninety mi
les an hour—plus. Damn. The kind of behavior that got people killed.

  Jake scooped his hat off the roof of his cruiser and shoved it on his head. He pushed Gina toward her red BMW as the taillights disappeared over a hill. “Go home.”

  “Aren’t you going to brutalize me?” She turned, cocked her hip to the side, and stuck her bottom lip out. Cute, but….

  “Go home. Duty calls, Gina.”

  “Chase them on your own time!”

  “I am on my own time.” At least he’d thought to cuff her and he didn’t have to peel her off his body for once. He opened his door and slid behind the wheel.

  “Hey, you can’t leave me like this.” Gina stomped her foot, and her braless breasts jiggled. “I have rights.”

  “No, you’ve got the key, and I suggest you use it.” If her eyes were loaded with rounds, she’d have shot him dead. Okay, for once, he agreed with fate. He needed to get away from Gina before he made a big mistake. No matter how hot and willing the woman, nothing but trouble would come from a fling with her. And the speeder provided the perfect excuse to hightail it out of there. What the heck had he been thinking?

  “What about your cuffs?”

  “I’ll get them later.” Or not. He would resort to his spare set. Sex with Gina. Not now—not ever. She was already getting clingy and they hadn’t done anything but flirt a little. It would be better to buy a new pair to replace them than to seek her out to get them back. He threw his Charger into drive and tore off, not bothering to hit his lights or sirens, not until he saw why the rush. Maybe they had a legitimate emergency, but doubtful.

  Overhead, the clouds churned, getting uglier by the second. Anyone driving into the bad weather looked for trouble. Three minutes later, hail began to pound down and the sky dumped rain. “Shit,” Jake cursed under his breath and pulled to the side as ice pellets pinged off the hood of his cruiser, leaving little dents. Why the Charger? Mother Nature didn’t have a clue what he’d gone through to get the car. The old Crown Victoria, he wouldn’t have an issue with, but not the Charger. Fuck. The muscle in his jaw twitched as his irritation grew. Whoever drove that Jeep would pay for dragging him into the storm.

  The sky continued to darken. It might as well be midnight. A smart man would hightail it out of there and consider the dings collateral damage, but the speeder could be headed into a bad situation.

  A little over two years before, one of those bad situations had hit Evans Point, and a lot of good people lost their lives. The storms in this corridor were nothing to toy with. His gut promised danger, and his instincts were never wrong.

  Two minutes later, the rain and hail stopped, but the ugly didn’t. Still dark, but quiet, that eerie calm before all hell busted loose. He pulled back onto the highway and resumed his pursuit. A mile up the road, he found the lawbreaker parked beside a barbwire fence clearly posted no trespassing. A tall woman wearing short shorts, hiking boots, and a tank top straddled the top strand as he stopped. He hit his lights and siren. The trespasser whipped her head around to look at him, a video camera in one hand, gripping the post with the other. The sky rumbled and Jake tilted his head back to watch the clouds boil overhead.

  Great, just great. Jake threw the door open and climbed out. He slammed it for added effect and leaned back against his vehicle, crossing his arms. He’d let his cruiser get dented following another of those thrill-seeking storm chasers?

  Christ knew they were drawn to this place since the storms tore the town up two years back. Evans Point seemed to become a beacon on every idiot’s and a few of the dumbass, wannabe meteorologists’ tourist maps. He’d had a deputy or two drive into hazardous situations because of them, and putting his men into unnecessary danger rubbed him the wrong way. Now, here he stood next to his hail-beaten Charger, that shouldn’t have a single ding on it. For what? “Where’s the fire?”

  “Um.”

  “You can read English?”

  “Yes,” she said but didn’t move, or attempt to climb off the fence.

  “So you have no excuse for ignoring the speed limit, or the sign hanging beside you. First things first. If you want to get past a barbwire fence, you pull down a strand in the middle and duck through the center. Second, that pasture is marked no trespassing for a reason. Will Evans’s big dogs will eat you if you set foot on his property. And third, just what the hell are you doing?”

  “I needed to get to the top of that hill to get a better view.” She held up her camera, as though he couldn’t see the device every other Tom, Dick, and Harry carried with them to try and capture the tornados. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to climb down and come over here.” He nodded to her vehicle. “This your rig?”

  “Yes.” She swung her leg over, wobbled, and fell, landing with a loud oomph. The exact reason you didn’t climb over a barbwire fence. The sky growled and rumbled. Jake glanced up, assessing the roiling clouds again. Swirling green wisps coiled like a snake about to strike, more movement than he’d seen in the last year, and that color certainly didn’t bode well. Not a good time for sightseeing or dealing with reckless tourists.

  “Since you’re the only one out here, I’m going to assume you were driving.”

  She nodded. The wind whipped her hair around her face, obscuring her features as she scrambled to her feet and dusted the mud off her seat. Jake’s gaze traveled down her body. Gina rocked her curves, knew that they drove men crazy, and worked them to her advantage. But this woman, she wore them like a familiar pair of jeans. And it made quite an impact. His dick twitched and he frowned. Now was also not the time to think about sex, or the lack thereof, and most certainly not with a stranger he planned to ticket—or arrest. Probably both.

  As she stepped closer, he noticed the piercing below her bottom lip, one of those double studs called a snakebite. A pair of tiny diamonds sparkled back at him. Jake liked his women natural, like the cowgirls he grew up with. Freaky had never been his thing, but something about the woman…. Damn, she looked good with them, leading him to his next thought. What other body parts were pierced?

  Not going there. “Driver’s license.”

  She reached in her pocket and pulled out a California license. “I just got out of the Army a month ago, was headed home and getting low on funds. Since I worked as a meteorologist in the military, and the weather started to turn ugly, I thought I could make a little bank.” She reached up and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “But you have to move fast with these systems or they’re gone before you can get the good stuff on film.

  “The good stuff?” Jake cocked his head. Was the woman clueless to what the community had been through because of her so-called good stuff? She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, drawing way too much of his attention for his comfort. Jake shook it off. “And that’s your excuse?”

  “I don’t normally drive that fast, but couldn’t risk that the storm would do its thing before I got to it, and I really need this footage. Film of a storm system like this would make quite a statement on my résumé. I’m hoping I can pick up a job doing the same thing—you know, a weather girl for one of the bigger cities in Cal—”

  That state again. He held his hand up, not wanting to hear a word about the West Coast. “That doesn’t explain why you were climbing over the fence onto private property.” He glanced down at the card. Quinn Smith. Army? She didn’t look like any female soldier he’d ever seen, but then again, he didn’t get out of Wyoming much. “So, Ms. Smith, care to tell me what any of this has to do with you breaking the law?”

  “I could sell video of this storm for a profit and have change to spare. Best shot was from up there. Just trying to make a little money to get home. I didn’t mean any harm and, I promise you, I don’t break the law often—ever—never. I don’t break the law. I really, really need this. Please, can you let it go?”

  The hair on his neck rose in response to a funny electricity in the air, like he stood near a high-voltage wire. Jake shook off the
warning and focused on the pretty woman before him. “So you were going to stand in the rain and film, hoping something would happen?”

  “Actually,” she said, “something is going to happen.” She gestured with her thumb to the sky behind her. “See all those bumps in that cloud that dip down like a bunch of breasts? That’s a cumulonimbus. Those pockets hold hailstones. A supercell is created when a cold and warm front collide. I’ve been tracking this weather, watching and waiting. And see how low they are—the little wisps and the rotation? Incredible. I can’t put words to it. It’s….”

  He looked up and noticed not only the rotation, but the twister that dropped down as she spoke. “A tornado.” Though he could appreciate the graphic description, breasts in the clouds and all, there were much bigger things than titties in the sky to worry about. He grabbed her hand. “This way.” Jake dragged her at full run a hundred yards down the interstate toward a culvert that ran under the highway. They were lucky she’d stopped so close to the only shelter for miles around, or they’d be out of luck.

  She glanced back. “Oh. A tornado. Wait.” As she lifted her camera, he jerked her around and all but shoved her over the auto gate and down into a dry streambed. He gave her another push toward the galvanized pipe under the pavement, big enough for two people to squeeze into. “Get in there.” The beast roared behind them, drawing closer. Jake unclipped his flashlight and slapped it into her hand. She sneaked a peek again, but this time she didn’t hesitate, diving into the dark tunnel, the bright beam bouncing before her. He crawled in after her.

  She jerked to an abrupt halt. With his body still hanging halfway out, and a tornado right behind them, he didn’t have the patience for whatever fear stopped her. Spiders, dark, tight closed in spaces….

  Jake shoved her ass. “Move!” The thing was too damned close. He didn’t need to get sucked out.