Unbridled

Dear Reader,

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything were either black or white? Good or evil? Wrong or right? Honestly, though, don’t you think it would also be unbearably boring? It’s one of the reasons we take great thrill in exploring the shades of gray that come between.

In Unbridled, hot, suspended Marine Carter Southard (from Branded) is cleared by sexy defense attorney Laney Cartwright of a civilian crime he didn’t commit, but he still must jump through military hoops if he hopes to be reinstated. As out of his league as Laney may be, he can’t help wanting to mess up her pristine existence just a little bit. But when steamy, no-strings sex evolves into much, much more, they must wrestle with their preconceptions of each other…as well as their own misconceptions of themselves.

We hope you enjoy Carter and Laney’s sizzling and sometimes heart-wrenching journey toward sexily-ever-after. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, USA (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the web at www.toricarrington.net.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.

Lori and Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington

Romantic Times BOOKreviews Career Achievement Award-winning, bestselling husband-and-wife duo LORI and TONY KARAYIANNI are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. Their forty novels include numerous Blaze® novels, as well as the ongoing Sofie Metropolis, PI, comedic mystery series with another publisher. Visit www.toricarrington.net and www. sofiemetro.com for more information on the couple and their titles.

Unbridled

Tori Carrington

We dedicate this book to the fellow shades-of-gray travelers everywhere: enjoy the journey!

And, as always, to our editor extraordinaire, Brenda Chin, who has a knack for seeing the forest and the trees.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Copyright

Prologue

FREEDOM WAS JUST a word…until you lost it. After you were put into a steel box and stripped of your personal belongings and your name, owning nothing more than a number and the crime for which you were charged.

“Inmate 55687, collect your things. You’ve been given your wings.”

Carter Southard stared at the guard from where he lay on the hard top bunk in the four-by-nine-foot cell in the San Antonio County Jail. The words couldn’t be meant for anyone else, because his bunk mate had been moved to a different cell the day before. Still, he couldn’t help considering the imagery. He’d just been given his wings.

He closed the Steinbeck novel he was reading and got to his feet. He’d stopped even hoping for his release two days into his incarceration five days ago. Since he’d been wrongfully accused of a crime, there was no reason to believe things would be set right. Not so long as he was locked away, unable to prove his innocence.

And that had been the most difficult part. Not the injustice. Not that he’d been set up to pay for someone else’s crime. But the loss of his freedom. Of his inability to fight back against an unseen enemy. Especially since his career in the Marines had always presented him with an identifiable target.

He gathered his few prison-issue toiletries and put them in the bag the guard provided and then stood Marine straight at the cell door. The guard motioned toward the block controller. The lock buzzed and the bars slid to the left. Carter turned so the guard could slap handcuffs on him and then turned around again.

Nearby inmates hooted and hollered as Carter followed the guard down the cell block. He kept his gaze forward, concentrating on the neat line of the other man’s neck, urging him to speed up his steps. He wanted to get clear of the building before someone realized they’d made a mistake and locked him back in that damned cell.

What seemed like a lifetime later, a door was opened and the guard stepped aside, motioning Carter to precede him in. Carter was only too happy to oblige, keeping his eyes down.

Almost there…almost there…

The first thing he spotted was a pair of shiny beige high heels. Not the kind that strippers wore, but conservative, neat ones that had the height, but none of the zing.

The legs that belonged to the shoes, on the other hand, were nothing short of spectacular.

“Clear a path, inmate,” the guard behind him ordered with a nudge of his nightstick.

Carter hadn’t realized he’d stopped moving. He continued forward, the cuffs chafing his wrists behind his back. When he looked up, the woman was staring at him. And he felt as if the guard had just used that stick to whack him in the stomach.

He’d known women he’d trust at his side in a combat situation, something they were not legally permitted to do. But the woman in front of him was the complete opposite of any he’d find itching for a chance to fight on the front lines. She looked like a Kewpie doll, like the type of pinup girl men who had served in the Second World War might have taped inside their lockers. She had short, wavy blond hair, a perfectly oval face and flawless porcelain skin. Her bright blue eyes were wide, and her lips were shaped as if they were forever in pucker mode, waiting to be kissed.

Okay, it was official: he was losing it. He’d just spent the past five days swearing off all women. And he knew from experience that women like this one were exactly the kind to avoid at all costs. This bird would stick her bloodred talons straight into a man’s chest and rip his heart out with arteries still fully attached.

The guard nudged him to turn and face him. He did, glad when the cuffs were removed. He absently rubbed his wrists and squinted at the woman, positive he was seeing things. Yes. Right now he was back in his cell, the Steinbeck novel in his hands, the woman before him a product of his imagination, an image sprung from the pages onto the blank wall of his unconscious mind.

Only not even his imagination was capable of conjuring the sweet smell of magnolias that engulfed him as she neared.

“Mr. Southard, I’m Laney Cartwright. Your attorney.” She smiled. “I hope they treated you well.”

His attorney? A couple of days ago he’d met with some snot-nosed public defender who’d looked as if he were two days out of grad school.

“I’m sorry—I’ve confused you,” she said as the guard put the bag containing his belongings down on the counter next to the box of the clothes and watch and dog tags he’d been wearing, confiscated upon his arrest. “I’ve been hired by Trace Armstrong and a certain JoEllen Atchison to make sure you were released properly.”

Carter stiffened at the mention of the couple responsible for his incarceration.

Miss June 1942 smiled again. “The real rapist has been caught. You’re a free man, Mr. Southard.”

Oh, yeah? If he was so free, why did he feel as if he’d gladly trade one prison cell for another so long as the leggy blonde was in it with him?

She looked at him a little too long. He tilted his head. She averted her gaze and then reached into her briefcase for something. She handed him what looked like the ring holding the key for his Harley.

“Mr. Armstrong arranged for your transportation to be delivered. It’s outside now.”

Carter raised his brows. If he didn’t know better, Ms. Cartwright was as intrigued by him as he was by her. Which surprised him. While he’d come across his fair share of uptown women happy to slum it for a night or two, the attorney type barely looked twice at a man like him.

“Oh, here,” she said, reaching into her briefcase again. “This is a letter of apology from Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Atchison. And while our business appears complete, should you need anything, this is my card with my office number in Dallas.”

Dallas. Exactly where he was going.

Was it him, or did she put special emphasis on the word anything?

He grinned.

“As your attorney, it’s my duty to strongly advise you to stay out of trouble, Mr. Southard.”

She turned to walk away. Carter watched her go. He enjoyed the suggestive sway of her hips in the beige designer suit she wore, the long line of her legs and those naughty heels. He shook his head.

The last thing he needed in his life now was a woman. The most recent one had nearly proved to be the end of him.

“Way out of your league, Southard,” the guard said, mirroring his own thoughts.

Carter slapped Ms. Cartwright’s business card on the desk and swapped it for his personal effects. “Pass that on to someone who is in her league, won’t you?”

And he turned toward the doors on his way to figure out the rest of his life. A life that would never include a woman like Laney Cartwright.

Chapter One

WHAT A DIFFERENCE two months made.

Or, rather, it was noteworthy how much the passage of time had affected Carter Southard’s view of reality. He no longer woke up abruptly looking for a wall of bars that blocked him from the rest of the world. He didn’t tense up when he passed a patrol officer on the road while driving his Harley, checking his rearview mirror to make sure the officer hadn’t turned to follow him.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the image of sexy Laney Cartwright standing in the jail’s property room, handing him the freedom that had been ripped from him through no fault of his own. Her face was what he saw the moment he opened his eyes in the morning, and the last thing he thought about when he nodded off at night. And he wasn’t granted a reprieve even then because his subconscious was given free rein over his unsatisfied desires and tortured him with fantasies involving the straitlaced defense attorney, fueling even more erotic images.

He hadn’t seen her since then. But at least five times a day he thought about reasons he could use to do just that. Partly because he hoped another face-to-face might knock some of the air out of his almost too perfect memory of her. Mostly because he hoped it wouldn’t.

Stupid. He knew it was. His recent experiences aside, inviting a woman into his life just now was probably the worst thing he could do.

Carter rolled over in the narrow bed. An ancient clattering fan doing little to cool the hot air in the small, two-bedroom bungalow outside the city.

Then a rancid smell made him draw back. He opened his eyes to stare into the droopy face of the neighbor’s old hound that sat next to his bed, watching him expectantly.

“Damn.” Carter sat up and grabbed his windup alarm clock. Just after eight-thirty in the morning. “How in the hell did you get in here again, Blue?”

All things being equal, Blue was as much his dog as his neighbor’s, but Carter couldn’t remember letting him in the house last night. He rubbed his face. Probably he’d left the back door open again. While he’d repaired the screen on the outer door a few days ago, it wouldn’t take much for a determined dog to undo his handiwork if he put his mind to it.

Carter pulled on his jeans and walked to the small kitchen. Old Blue had definitely put his mind to it.

The hound’s nails clacked against the wood floor as he followed him. He barked once, a half howl that could wake all the neighbors. Of course, at eight-thirty most were probably already up.

“All right, all right. Hush now. I’ll get your breakfast in a minute.”

The dog’s only response was to tilt his head to the side. Which was about as good as it got with him.

Carter washed his face in the kitchen sink and shook out his hands before pouring the last of the sludge in the coffeemaker into a cup and putting it into the microwave. Then he filled the food and water bowls for Blue and took both out to the back porch, where the puddle of slobber the hound would leave behind wouldn’t be as much of a nuisance as it was inside.

He stood next to the dog, looking around the three acres of land that had been in his family for more than a hundred years. The property had once been a couple of thousand acres, but after four generations, the parcel had been chopped up many times for inheritance purposes, and much of it sold off, so all that remained was the piece of land around him. And he was all that remained in the area of the original family. The brush was overgrown, fences were in disrepair. If he needed any further proof of that, he just had to look at the horse grazing in the distance. Another animal that belonged to one of his neighbors, this time the one to the west.

The microwave dinged. Carter let himself back into the kitchen, considering Blue’s handiwork as he did, and took the cup out, downing half the scalding contents before picking up the single telephone on the wall. He put a call through to the Jacksons to tell them to collect their horse before it wandered off where they wouldn’t find it.

“Thanks, Carter,” Julia Jackson said after a long sigh. “I’ll go right out and collect her. Damn horse. She’ll never learn that the grass doesn’t taste any better on your side of the fence.”

Carter hung up the receiver and downed the rest of the coffee, his gaze drawn to the calendar on the wall. It was one of those given away by insurance companies, the pictures horrible, the paper already yellow although it was only August. But it showed the days and that was all that mattered.

Carter looked to where his right hand still rested on the telephone receiver. Then, before he knew he was going to do it, he picked it back up and dialed a number he’d memorized two months ago.

“Gavin, Ewing and Clairmont, Attorneys,” a receptionist said in a cheery voice that set Carter’s teeth on edge.

“Yeah. Give me Laney Cartwright.”

Chapter Two

LANEY CARTWRIGHT GAZED OUT her tenth-floor office window. It was lunchtime and Bryan Street bustled with life. Life that would vanish after five when everyone scrambled to their homes in the suburbs, leaving Dallas a ghost town dotted with the few tourists and conventioneers who dared peek outside their hotels.

She hadn’t been in the windowed office very long. For the past three years she’d worked in a glorified cubicle on the open floor, one of many associate attorneys competing for a shot at the few offices that went up for grabs. Despite her impeccable résumé, she’d worked long and hard for this promotion to junior firm attorney. Eighty-hour weeks, carrying the load of three, burning the candle at both ends and the middle so that she barely had time to sleep, much less have a personal life.

Maybe that was the reason she’d been preoccupied ever since the legal secretary she shared with two other attorneys told her that a certain Mr. Carter Southard had called that morning to make an appointment. Violet had said there was nothing open, but he’d persisted, saying he needed no more than a couple of minutes and that it was important.

Important.

So Laney had told her to pencil something in during the lunch hour. Seeing Carter would at least keep her from thinking too much about the menacing note she’d received that morning.

Now she swiveled her desk chair away from the window and considered the case file open in front of her. When was the last time she’d had sex?

She twisted her lips. That was it, wasn’t it? The fact that her love life had been nonexistent for so long was allowing her to daydream about what it might be like to act on that spark of attraction she’d felt two months ago, even though the jail jumpsuit and unshaven appearance of Carter Southard should have been enough to turn her off.

But it hadn’t. Instead, in the first two weeks following their meeting, she found herself drifting off mid-conversation during social dinners and even phone calls, her concentration broken by the brief flash of Carter’s strong hands. The granite set of his jaw. The half grin he’d given her when he apparently realized she returned the interest he displayed, however reluctantly.

What was she talking about? The sensation had taken her so much by surprise, there hadn’t been a chance for her to be reluctant about anything.

Besides, she wouldn’t be seeing him again. So what was the harm in returning his smile, letting him see what she was thinking? Saying without words, “Gee, Carter, another time, another place, you and me might have had a good time together. A very good time, indeed.”

Laney swallowed hard, realizing that this was another time. And another place. And she was actually looking forward to seeing if that potential for a good time still existed. Oh, she didn’t intend to act on it. But that brief interaction with Carter had been enough to fuel some interesting late-night sessions alone up until…well, even last night.

The intercom button buzzed. Laney picked up the phone. “Yes?”

The forty-five-year-old secretary said, “Your father on line one. He wants to know why you canceled lunch.”

“Tell him I have an important meeting.”

Silence.

Laney sighed. “I’ll talk to him.” She pressed the button for the correct line and then leaned back in her chair. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, yourself. So what’s this I hear you’ve canceled our lunch today?”

“Sorry about that. A new development on the Mac-Gregor case came up and I’ve scheduled a strategy lunch to work it out.”

Laney didn’t lie to her father often. Mostly because he knew her better than anyone and immediately spotted an untruth. He would never go so far as to say it, but the few times she had relied on deception to hide her intentions had always ended with them both knowing where they stood.

She supposed that’s what happened when you were so close. After her mother passed away when she was twelve, Laney and her father had formed a bond that transcended parent and child. He was her best friend.

“What’s the development?”

Laney blanched. Exhibit A on why she should never lie to her father.

Of course, he knew everything that was happening with State v. MacGregor, the case that had dominated her life for the past two months. The case that had also dominated the local and statewide news media, what with her young client accused of first-degree murder during an armed robbery.

The crime itself wasn’t so much what garnered interest. Rather it was the fact that Devon MacGregor came from one of the wealthiest families in Texas.

“I received an interesting note this morning,” she said quietly.

“Note?”

Laney hadn’t planned on saying anything about it just then, but she figured she would have told her father sooner or later, so she might as well use it to her benefit now.

“Yes. Plain block letters. ‘Drop MacGregor. Or else.’”

“Or else what?”

Laney sighed and fished out the note she’d placed in a Ziploc bag from the papers on her desk. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said.

“Have you given it to the police?”

“I have a call in. I was told a detective will stop by sometime this afternoon.”

“Good.”

There was a brief knock on the door. “Your twelve o’clock is here,” Violet said.

Laney felt as if her stomach were full of a thousand butterflies flapping their wings to get out.

“Look, Daddy, people are beginning to arrive for the meeting.”

She quickly said her goodbyes, hoping that she wasn’t being too transparent, then left both hands on the telephone after she’d hung up.

“Hello again,” Carter said from the open doorway.

Laney nearly knocked the receiver from its cradle and she fumbled to right it again.

She looked at the man responsible for her duplicity…and discovered that the hectic sensation she’d experienced two months ago was nothing compared with the one the cleaned-up version of Carter Southard made on her now.

What he wore was nothing special—a denim shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. It was the details that did Laney in. The way his sleeves were rolled up over his corded forearms. The cocky way he stood that pulled his well-worn jeans just so across his groin. The scuffed boots that proved he was a man who didn’t wear them just for show, but had earned every last speck of Texas dust fused to the old leather.

In Carter’s case, he wore the clothes—the clothes didn’t wear him.

She looked up to find him grinning knowingly and the bottom dropped out of her stomach altogether, freeing the butterflies there.

Oh, boy. It looked as though she was going to have to get used to her father’s concerned reaction because she had the feeling that she was going to be doing a whole hell of a lot of lying in the foreseeable future.

Chapter Three

OH, YES. This was exactly what Carter was looking for. Laney Cartwright’s heated reaction to his appearance would stroke any man’s ego; to his, it was a much-needed boost.

It wasn’t often his path crossed with women of her class. Just seeing her sitting behind that expensive desk in her navy blue suit, her white-blond hair slicked back into some kind of neat do, baring her pale, elegant neck and what he suspected were real pearls at her delicate lobes—it all spoke of someone used to the better things in life.

Merely looking at her made him feel as if he’d soiled her somehow.

His grin widened. Oh, how he wanted to get her even dirtier still.

Laney looked as if she’d forgotten something and quickly got to her feet. She edged around the desk to face him, wiping her palms on her pencil-thin skirt before extending her right hand. “Where are my manners?” she said with a smile. “Hello, Mr. Southard.” She gave his hand a quick shake, but Carter held on to hers a heartbeat longer. “It’s good to see you again,” she said.

He cocked a brow. “Is it?”

He watched as her initial surprise melted into something much different. Much more dangerous. Although to whom, he couldn’t say.

She leaned against the edge of her desk and crossed her arms over her chest, drawing his gaze there and down to the long line of her legs in another pair of naughty high heels. She pursed her pink lips and considered him with the same naked suggestion that he knew was in his eyes.

Huh. A woman who liked a challenge.

While Carter could honestly say he’d never dated anyone with so much schooling, he had dated a woman or two who engaged him on more than a physical level. And Laney looked as if she could easily wipe them from his memory, set a new benchmark for those who would come after her.

She obviously enjoyed the sexual game of cat and mouse, where it was never quite clear who was the cat and who the mouse, with each of them easily sliding into either role to achieve some undefined objective.