Still Taking Chances Read online

  Table of Contents

  Still Taking Chances

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  About The Author

  Red Sage Publishing

  An eRedSage Publishing Publication

  This book is a work of complete fiction. Any names, places, incidents, characters are products of the author’s imagination and creativity or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is fully coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form whatsoever in any country whatsoever is forbidden.

  Information:

  Red Sage Publishing, Inc. P.O. Box 4844 Seminole, FL 33775

  727-391-3847 eRedSage.com

  Still Taking Chances

  An eRed Sage Publication All Rights Reserved Copyright © 2011

  eRedSage is a registered trademark of Red Sage Publishing, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.eRedSage.com

  ISBN: 9781603107235; 1603107231 Still Taking Chances Adobe PDF

  ISBN: 9781603107266; 1603107266 Still Taking Chances MobiPocket

  ISBN: 9781603107259; 1603107258 Still Taking Chances HTML

  ISBN: 9781603107242; 160310724X Still Taking Chances ePub

  Published by arrangement with the authors and copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  Still Taking Chances © 2011 by Roz Lee

  Cover © 2011 by Lynn Taylor

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  ebook layout and conversion by jimandzetta.com

  Still Taking Chances

  ***

  By Roz Lee

  TO MY READERS:

  I’m so excited to bring you Elgin’s story. This character came to me some time ago, and I’ve wanted to tell his story ever since. Elgin is a good person who struggles with who he is until he meets that one special woman who loves and accepts him. It’s an emotional story, and one of the truest love stories I’ve ever written. Enjoy!

  READER ALERT!:

  Bad-boy Elgin Huddleston can’t stay away from the sweet looking Dominatrix who lives across the street; even though Mary Beth Winters is doing everything she can to break him. You’ll want to break out the fan, because things are heating up on Sycamore Street!

  Chapter One

  He’d imagined this walk a thousand times over the last fifteen years. Always at the end of the journey was the house on the corner, his grandmother in the kitchen, and a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies on the table for him. Not much had changed on the shade-dappled street. The clapboard houses and neat yards were the same as they had been when he’d last made this walk. Then, the house had been at his back, and the sidewalk had been lit by streetlights and lightning bugs. He shifted the small duffle from one hand to the other, the irony not lost on him. The bag held everything he needed, just as it had when he’d left, only now his wallet held more than enough for a bus ticket to Dallas, and there was even more in a bank account, should he need it.

  He’d been on recon missions through jungles filled with deadly creatures sporting anywhere from zero to eight legs, and felt more prepared, more in control, than he did today.

  Elgin ‘Hud’ Huddleston stood on the opposite corner letting the memories settle over and through him. The house looked much the same. As long as he could remember, it had been in need of a paint job. He’d sent his grandmother money to paint it a few years ago, and he could see now she hadn’t spent the money on repairs. If a house could look lonely, this one did. Its windows, despite the curtains, were like the eyes of a dead man. The ‘For Sale’ sign behind the white picket fence was like a blade to the gut.

  A movement drew his gaze to the opposite side of the yard, and he closed his eyes against the mirage. She wasn’t there. His mind was playing tricks on him. Randy had dropped him off on the edge of town, and his first stop on his solitary journey home had been the cemetery next to the Methodist Church. He’d found the tombstone easily enough as the ground hadn’t yet been filled in where the fresh dug dirt had settled and sunk. No, he knew for certain his grandmother wasn’t in the front yard, but someone for damn sure was.

  His hand clenched tight around the woven canvas strap on the duffle, and he stepped off the curb and crossed the street in long, purposeful strides. A woman wearing denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt knelt with her back to the street, pulling weeds from his grandmother’s flowerbed. A large-brimmed straw hat flopped limp in the early morning heat, obscuring her face. The dainty pink soles of her bare feet drew his attention. His gaze traveled up her short, milky white legs to her sweetly rounded bottom. His body reacted, despite the warning bells in his head clanging louder than the Baptist Church carillon on Sunday morning. Damn. He’d been too long without a woman. He should have stayed in Dallas long enough to at least visit one of the clubs there. A night or two on his knees would have done him good. It was too late for that now. He’d come back to Prairieview to heal, and he didn’t need sex for that. He needed peace and quiet. He needed to be left alone.

  Lust gave way to white-hot anger. Coming home was hard enough without finding a do-gooder busybody in his yard.

  “Get the hell out of my yard.” He used the commanding voice he knew got results, dismissing the intruder without another thought. Hud pushed open the gate and stalked up the creaking wood steps to the front door. For the briefest second, he faced the vacant oval of glass, looking, but not seeing the empty room beyond. The moment of panic passed, and he counted the flowerpots on the porch rail until he got to the fifth one. He lifted the plant out by the roots and pried the hidden key from the tangled geranium roots.

  He sucked in a calming breath and fit the key in the lock. His footsteps on the polished hardwood floors echoed through the empty rooms. All the furniture had been moved to a storage facility to facilitate the sale of the house. All that was left were the ghosts of antiques, and Hud’s memory of the warm feeling of home. He walked through the empty shell of a house. He stood in the center of each room and slowly turned a full circle, taking in the out-of-date paint colors and timeless architecture of the Craftsman style bungalow.

  The curtains were all that remained of his grandmother’s furnishings. There were lacy ones in the living room, cherry dotted swiss café-style in the kitchen, pink ruffled ones that matched the rose-colored carpet in his grandmother’s bedroom and faded Dallas Cowboys panels in the room that had been his until the day he graduated from high school. Since then he’d lived with a lot less than a hard wooden floor and a roof over his head. It would do for now. Hud dropped his duffle on the hardwood floor in ‘his’ bedroom and turned.

  A woman stood in the doorway, blocking his exit. His ability to size up his opponent had saved his life more than once, and he instinctively catalogued her. Petite, late twenties to early thirties, red hair, blue eyes, and freckles liberally spread across a face flushed from either the strain of pulling weeds in the heat, or anger, or desire. He quickly dismissed the possibility of desire, based on the way she held the garden spade in her gloved hand as if she meant to use it on him. Her stance said attack, rather than defend. Even if he hadn’t recognized the droopy hat, he would have recognized her as the same woman who’d been in his yard. Standing up, her legs weren’t any longer, but they sure as hell were shapely. He took a quick inventory of his opponent, and decided she had just the right amount of curves in all the right places. His cock stood at attention. Too bad she’d probably run screaming if she knew what he was thinking. Hud held his hands up chest high, palms out.
>
  “I surrender.” What else could he do, faced with such overwhelming opposition?

  She continued to hold him prisoner with the spade. He gave her credit for following him. Not many men would have done it, and a few who had, hadn’t lived to tell about it. All the more reason, he thought, it was time to come home. When a woman half his size could sneak up on him with a weapon, garden spade aside, it was time to call it quits.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” Her voice was steady, and she held the spade like she knew what to do with it. His cock pressed against his fly at the thought.

  “Who are you,” he countered, “and why are you in my house?”

  “I asked first.”

  Not an ounce of fear. Either she was stupid, or she thought she had the upper hand. He dropped his hands to his sides and took a step closer to her. “Get out. I don’t want any company.”

  She stood her ground. Hud moved closer. He towered a good foot over her, but she didn’t budge. Instead, she pressed the tip of her makeshift weapon against his fly.

  “Come closer, and I’ll hurt you.”

  Damn. She sounded like she meant it. She certainly wasn’t like any of the women he remembered in this one horse town. “Promise?” he asked, and shuffled his feet closer. Fire blazed in her eyes, and she dug the spade into his cock. Hud stepped back. “Geez, woman!” He refused to let her see how badly that had hurt, or how much it excited him.

  “I warned you.” She planted her feet and waved the spade in his face. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  Under different circumstances, Hud would have found this situation promising, but not today. As cute as she was, he didn’t have the patience to put up with any more nonsense. “Look, lady, I’ve had a long day, and all I want is some peace and quiet. I’m only going to say this once, so listen carefully. This is my house. I belong here, you don’t. So, unless you plan to put that spade to good use, I suggest you leave.” His voice rumbled out of his chest and over the woman like thunder across the Texas prairie. Only an insane person would hold their ground in the face of the impending storm.

  “Drop your pants, and I’ll put this to good use. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Hud’s chin dropped to his toes. He made a conscious effort to close his mouth.

  “You don’t think I noticed how your cock got harder when I rammed you with the spade? I know your kind. You’re big and macho on the outside, but you get turned on by a woman in charge. If I’d had a whip instead of a spade, I bet you’d have your pants around your knees, and you’d be begging me to do you.” She came close enough he could easily grab her. He was too stunned to move, much less subdue her. She waved the spade under his nose. “This is a small town, people talk, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  She dropped the spade, narrowly missing his toes, and left.

  “Well damn.” He crouched to pick up the spade, fingering the small gouge it had made in the floor. “Welcome home, Hud.”

  * * * * *

  Mary Beth threw the deadbolt, and leaned her forehead against the cool, sturdy wood of her front door. Her heart pounded against her chest, and her body temperature had nothing to do with the oppressive heat outside. She’d moved to Prairieview five years ago, hoping a change of scenery would equal a change in other ways too, but in less than five minutes, she’d proved how unsuccessful her plan had been.

  Those eyes. At first, she’d seen something so dark and wounded in them that she’d wanted to comfort him, but then he’d reacted to her jab, and she’d seen something completely different. Desire. And then it had all rushed back in on her and spilled out of her mouth before she could stop it. All her carefully guarded secrets were now in the hands of a complete stranger.

  She pushed away from the door and headed to the kitchen. Her mouth was as dry as the Sahara. Too bad it hadn’t been too dry to speak earlier. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have hung her dirty laundry on the line and given a stranger enough clothesline to hang her. Granted, he was a sinfully handsome stranger, but still. . .

  Who was he anyway? And why had he marched right into Mrs. Huddleston’s house as if he owned it? Now that she was away from his seductive presence, his words came back to her. His house. He’d been adamant that the house was his.

  “You don’t suppose. . . . ? No, surely not.” The idea was too incredible to even think. As far as she knew, no one had heard from him, other than Mrs. Huddleston’s lawyer, in fifteen years. It couldn’t be.

  Mary Beth left the empty glass on the counter and went to the front window to gaze across the street at the house that was a mirror image of her own. The man who had frightened the wits out of her was nowhere in sight, a good thing in her opinion. “He knew where to find the key. I didn’t know there was a key there,” she muttered. “How did he know about the key?”

  If it was him, he was a bastard, literally and figuratively. Mrs. Huddleston hadn’t spoken of him much, but when she did, it was with pride, and lots of love. She had a few photos of him scattered around the house. Mary Beth had asked about the boy in the photos once, wondering who he was and why she didn’t have any recent photos of him.

  “That’s my grandson, Elgin. He’s a government agent, a real hero.”

  “He’s a nice looking kid,” she’d lied. Elgin Huddleston had a wild look in his eyes, as if he was only half tamed. Most of the photos were of him as a child, school photos. There was one of him standing next to an old beat up car. She’d recognized the location, the driveway that ran along the side of the house to the detached one car garage. The boy in the photo had skinny arms that were years away from the muscles of a mature man. She’d estimated him to be about fifteen at the time the photo had been taken. He’d been leaning against the front fender of the car, an older model Mustang, his hips cocked, legs crossed at the ankles. His thin arms were folded across his chest in a tough guy pose. Mary Beth remembered it well. It was the only photo in the bunch where Elgin Huddleston had been smiling. At the time, she’d been drawn to the photo, seeing the heart stopping man the boy would grow to be.

  There was one of him in cap and gown at his high school graduation, the most recent photo of the bunch. “Do you see him often?”

  “No. I raised him, but he needed more than Prairieview had to offer, so he went to find it. He did real well for himself.”

  There had been such sadness in her voice that Mary Beth had changed the subject, cursing the thoughtless boy in the photos for hurting his grandmother.

  She was still contemplating the question when the subject of her musing emerged from the house and took off on foot toward town. “I wonder where he’s going.” Before she knew what she was doing, Mary Beth was out the door and running to catch up with him.

  “Hey! Hey you! Wait!” She danced barefoot across the hot blacktop road and sprinted to catch up with him. She matched his stride, taking two steps for his one. “Can you slow down? I can’t talk and run at the same time.”

  “No.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about. . . about, you know,” she said, catching up to him.

  “About holding me hostage in my own house with a garden spade?”

  Mary Beth thought she caught a touch of humor in his comment, but the way his nostrils flared and the thin line of his lips didn’t back up her theory.

  “I’m sorry. Can we stop for a minute? Please?” She stopped, hands on her hips and watched him continue on. After a few steps, he too stopped. Mary Beth glared at his back, waiting for him to turn around. If he was the boy in the photos, he had indeed grown to be a man. There wasn’t anything skinny about the stranger. She admired the view. His shoulders were broad and heavily muscled beneath the tight black T-shirt. Golden bronze skin stretched over sinuous arm muscles covered with a heavy dose of black hairs. Her eyes traveled down his arms to his hands, clenched into fists at his side, and rested on his fine, firm backside. She wondered if the bronze gilding extended below his waistband. If this was Elgin Huddleston, he had grown into
a fine male specimen, outwardly at least.

  He took a deep breath that stretched his T-shirt across his rib cage and flexed his hands at his sides, as if willing himself to relax. He turned to face her. Dark sunglasses reflected her face, and for a brief moment, Mary Beth felt like the only unarmed cowboy at the O.K. Corral. She squared her shoulders and shielded her eyes from the midday glare with a hand to her forehead.

  She hopped over to the cooler strip of grass between the walk and the curb, wincing at the abused soles of her feet. “Maybe we could start over. I’m Mary Beth. I live across the street. Mrs. Huddleston was a friend of mine.”

  “This concerns me, how?”

  “Uhm. Well, I know the realtor who has the listing on Mrs. Huddleston’s house. She would have told me if it was sold.”

  “It hasn’t sold, and it isn’t Mrs. Huddleston’s house anymore. It’s mine.”

  “And you would be?” she prompted.

  “That’s none of your business.” He turned to go, dismissing Mary Beth without answering. She took off after him, catching up after a few steps. Mary Beth put her hand on his arm to stop him. Her fingers closed around hot steel. It was like grabbing hold of an electric fence. She wanted to let go, but a steady buzz of electric current paralyzed her fingers. Damn. Something in her knew this man was more than a match for her, and if her instincts were right about this sort of thing, and they usually were, he’d be a challenge, but well worth the effort in the end.

  He stopped, tilting his face down so she knew he was looking at her hand clenched around the hard muscles of his forearm. Mary Beth snatched her hand away and did her best to project her ‘miss innocent small town girl’ image. It had worked for five years, so she had good reason to expect it to work now. “Look, Mister, it is my business. I can’t let a stranger walk in off the street and just move into a vacant house. If you won’t tell me who you are, and why you believe the house is yours, I’ll have to call the police.”