Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,77

in the mountains. Living alone for the first time was a definite change, but I found a rental house closer to both work and Joe. Who needed a roommate when I had a class of thirty smiling six-year-olds to keep me busy?

My newfound loner status worried Joe. Emotionally, I was way past needing someone to check in on me, but he knew all too well how much I missed Thea. Misty was Joe’s receptionist, but every Friday morning, he had her drive him past the barbershop to drop him off at my place. I thought it was sweet. To hear him tell it, he just liked chatting over coffee while I got ready, but I knew he was really just keeping an eye on me. It was fine. I liked the company. I’d drop him back off at the barbershop on my way to the school.

This was exactly how Joe and I ended up in the car together when Jonathan Caskey not only pulled us over at seven thirty in the morning, but also searched my vehicle and purse and then arrested me for the possession of marijuana that was absolutely not mine.

There. All caught up. Welcome to my hell.

“Hey!” I shouted at a uniformed officer as he approached my cell. I’d been cuffed behind my back all day, blisters rubbing on my wrists, my shoulders aching.

It was getting late and the drunks were starting to roll in. Slurring and stumbling, some of them flat-out belligerent, yet they were totally free inside that relic of a holding cell.

My head was pounding and I was pissed beyond all belief. It was a Friday, but shockingly, not a single judge had been available all damn day to set my bail. Cop after cop had told me it was out of their control, but the grin on Jonathan Caskey’s face each time he went out of his fucking way to pass my cell said otherwise.

“I have the right to an attorney, you know. It’s the law!”

Clovert’s very own Barney Fife stopped at my door, and after a quick unlock routine, he slid it open. “If you would shut up for once, I’ll take you to him.”

My back shot straight and relief crashed over me. Finally, Joe must have been able to find me a lawyer in town willing step on some Caskey toes—and hopefully Caskey skulls too. Jonathan’s minion roughly grabbed my arm and slammed the door shut behind me.

I winced. “Could you take it easy?”

He swung an icy gaze my way and lifted a bandaged hand in the air. “Did you take it easy on me when I was processing you?”

It was safe to say I had not. I’d bit this guy and kicked Jonathan in the shin. It was a real miss because I was aiming for his balls, but at least I’d made contact.

“You’ll survive. I don’t have rabies or anything.”

“So you say.” He hauled me down the short hall before stopping at an open doorway.

I’d had a lot of surprises in my life. Some rendered me speechless. Some broke my heart. Some changed the trajectory of my life as a whole.

But nothing, and I mean nothing, surprised me more than walking into that tiny room only big enough for a table and two folding chairs at the Clovert police station and finding Camden Cole standing inside.

This wasn’t any version of Camden Cole I’d ever known, not even the sexy twenty-two-year-old I’d left naked and tangled in sheets five years earlier or the dozen pictures I’d obsessed over on Instagram.

No, this was Camden Cole all grown up.

Any other day, I would have flat-out drooled at the sight of this man. Gray three-piece suit. White shirt. Dark-gray tie. Thick muscles testing the skill of his tailor, because there was no way that suit had been anything other than custom made. He was roughly the same height, but his lanky frame now held the bulk of a man. His presence filled the room. Gone were the subtle curves of his jaw; now, he was all razor-sharp angles and he carried them with the resolute square of his shoulders.

Those blue eyes that had pierced my soul when I was only eleven years old were the same though. Well, they were the same if you didn’t count the way they lit with a malevolent rage the minute they landed on me.

“How long has she been in those cuffs?” he snapped, his deep baritone demanding answers.

In that second, it didn’t matter if we were standing