Crossing Hope (Cross Creek Series Book 4) Read online

  She realized, just a beat too late, that he’d turned to look at her, his chin resting against his shoulder so just his eyes showed over the top of his T-shirt. His smirk translated flawlessly though, crinkling the edges of those darker-than-coffee eyes with edgy danger rather than anything suggesting humor.

  “Not a Cross, huh?”

  Marley willed her voice not to shake. “No.”

  Greyson’s smirk grew darker, his stare along with it. “Whatever you say, darlin’.”

  The word sent an unexpected and very intense shot of heat down Marley’s spine, and it pooled even more hotly between her hips when it landed. Which was stupid, honestly. She’d heard the word bunches of times before; for God’s sake, that gossip, Amber Cassidy, had aimed it at her only a couple of hours ago in The Corner Market. But something about the way Greyson had said it, the way he’d leaned on the r and rolled over that l with ease, yet still made the whole thing slide off his tongue with just a hint of sexy suggestion, kept that warmth firmly in place in her body.

  In that brief, impulsive moment, Marley wanted nothing more than to slide off his tongue. Which was dangerous for so many reasons.

  Not the least of which was that it was the first thing she’d wanted at all since arriving in this Godforsaken town, other than to get the hell out.

  “Don’t call me ‘darlin’,” she snapped, putting enough emphasis on the word to make it sound like the meanest sort of insult rather than something that had made her want to take off her panties and fling them at him. “You know what, forget it. I don’t care what you think or why you’re here. In fact, I can’t wait to be booked so I can get the hell out of here and never have to lay eyes on you again.”

  Greyson stiffened, although whether it was in surprise or something else, Marley couldn’t tell. “The feeling’s mutual, I can promise you that. Darlin’.”

  “Perfect,” Marley gritted out. “Then at least there’s one thing we can agree on.”

  Then she turned to her side, giving him her back, closed her eyes, and pretended to fall fast asleep.

  4

  Twenty-seven bottles of beer on the wall, twenty-seven bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around…

  Yep. It was official. Greyson had lost his goddamned mind.

  Okay, he thought, shifting his weight from one side of his numb ass to the other. So he was bored to the point of insanity, and his ass matched the arm that was handcuffed neatly to the bars by his left ear. But he was nothing if not stubborn, and definitely nothing if not tough. He’d endured far worse than the soft, feminine breaths sounding off from the other side of the jail cell, not to mention the hellfire and brimstone attitude that had preceded them. Marley Rallston might have a lot more mettle than he’d assumed she would, but he had a hundred more important things to spend his brain power on than the headstrong brunette.

  Except.

  Greyson had to admit that after months of her being little more than a rumor of near-mythical proportions, it was a curious thing she’d set so much as a baby toe outside of the perfect haven of Cross Creek Farm, and a damned curious thing that she’d ended up in the pokey on her first real foray into town. And to shoplift groceries from The Corner Market, of all the weird-ass things, when he’d bet everything he owned that her pantry was brimming and her family’s farm flush with the literal fruits of their labor? Then to go all guns-blazing when Greyson had called her a Cross—which she was, no matter how puffed up she got over it, because damn, those Crosses all had that same holier-than-thou attitude. But why would she come to town after all this time if she hated her family enough to renounce them? The longer he sat here rolling over the particulars, the more he had to admit that nothing about Marley’s actions or reactions made any damned sense.

  It also doesn’t matter, dumbass. The reminder sliced cleanly, bringing him back to the police station floor with a snap. He didn’t give a shit about anything that wasn’t fenced in by the borders of Whittaker Hollow, least of all a woman who was as brash as she was bullheaded. Plus, no matter how hard Marley argued to the contrary, both her Bahama-blue eyes and her bloodline really did label her a Cross.

  Which meant she was mouthy, presumptuous, and far more trouble than she was worth. No matter how fucking hot he’d felt in the pit of his belly when he’d looked over his shoulder and caught her staring at him with a glint of something far too familiar in her stare.

  She’d looked hungry. And not in a whoops, I skipped breakfast, yes, I want fries with that sort of way.

  Greyson rolled his eyes and gave himself a mental thump to the skull. Probably, he just needed to get laid. It was a feat easier said than done in a town the size of a pinprick, and one where Greyson had lived since birth. Not that he’d ever had trouble attracting willing participants—he might be chock-full of rough edges and hard straightaways, but he hadn’t been born ugly. At least, not if his track record was any indication. But small-town living had its drawbacks, the biggest of which (as far as his libido was concerned, anyway) was that he’d exhausted his options for local dating by the time he’d finished high school. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, he might as well drain the dating pool, fill it with a bunch of dirt and concrete, and build a fucking park. Greyson usually hauled himself to the bars in Camden Valley, or even farther out to Lockridge, when he got a wild enough hair about being unlaid. He hadn’t made the trip in a while, with it being the growing season and all. If the ruckus that both his brain and his balls were currently making about Marley goddamned Rallston was any indication, he was far overdue.

  She pulled in another slow, steady breath from behind him. Christ, even her inhale/exhale made him want to turn around to watch her chest move, and wasn’t that all the encouragement he needed to scratch the get-laid itch, ASAP?

  Heavy boot-steps thumped a brisk, measured rhythm over the linoleum from the far end of the hallway, sending Greyson’s heart into a matching beat and his legs awkwardly under him as he found his feet and stood.

  “It’s about damned time,” he muttered. He knew that shooting his mouth off like a two-dollar pistol was an iffy idea at best—clearly, he had zero leverage, here. But shitty odds had never stopped him before. Shitty ideas? Even less likely to keep him in check. The collection of parking tickets in his glove box was case in freaking point.

  Lane frowned, but surprisingly didn’t push back. “Okay, you two,” he said, dividing his glance between Greyson and Marley, who had pushed up from the bench in a swift, soundless move, looking suspiciously bright-eyed and alert for someone who had allegedly been snoozing her day away. “Both of your arrest reports have been entered into the system, so the next step is booking.”

  His gaze settled on Marley, then, as if maybe she’d come up with some perfectly reasonable explanation for her actions and he’d be able to spring her, no harm, no foul.

  No chance. She slid her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs and kept her gaze fastened firmly ahead, leaving Lane no choice but to continue and Greyson no choice but to be more curious than he wanted to over why she hadn’t tried for the out.

  “In the interest of efficiency, I’m going to process you one right after the other. You’ll be fingerprinted, and have your mug shots taken. Then, once that’s done, you’ll both be escorted next door for your bond hearings with the judge.”

  Again, Lane paused, only this time, it was to look at Greyson. “You do get a phone call, too. If you want to try to get in touch with your old man to make arrangements for bail—”

  “No.” Every part of Greyson turned to steel except for his pulse. God damn it.

  He dragged in a breath, slipping a no-shits-given-here expression over his face even though it took effort. He might’ve seen his father’s true colors years ago, and liked them then as little as he did today, but that didn’t mean he had to let anybody see his. Least of all Lane Atlee and Marley Cross. Rallston. Whatever.

  “I’ll be needing Cody Garrity’s number,” Greyson drawled, packing his tone with maximu
m levels of boredom and arrogance. “I want to be sure I can get my truck tonight, before he closes up shop.”

  “Suit yourself,” Lane said after a beat of obvious surprise. “Let’s get moving, then.”

  He turned, reaching for the side of the handcuffs he’d looped around the bars of the jail cell, when Marley finally broke her stubborn vow of silence.

  “What about me?”

  The question moved past her lips simply, her voice carrying just the slightest edge of huskiness from having not been used for a while. Her shoulders were still set in that unyielding line that radiated both tension and toughness, and Lane’s brows tucked in obvious confusion.

  “The rules prohibit us from processing more than one person at a time. As soon as I’m done with Greyson, you two can switch places, then you’ll both go see Judge Abernathy. It won’t be long.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Marley’s pretty, peach-colored mouth pursed in a frown. “Don’t I get a phone call, too?”

  “Oh. Uh. Well, yes, but I…” Lane paused for a nice, long look-see at the floor, clearing his throat. “I already called Owen. He and Hunter and Eli will meet you at the courthouse.”

  A noise of frustration flew out of her chest. “You made my phone call for me?” Marley asked, incredulous, and Greyson had to admit, the move had taken stones the size of country watermelons on Lane’s part. Not that he was nearly as shocked as Marley seemed to be that the guy had given her brothers the heads up. Everyone in the Cross’s inner circle always looked out for their own, like the sort of rah-rah, made-for-TV movie that made his sisters sigh with overblown gushiness and him want to do a reverse swan dive with the contents of his stomach.

  “You’re entitled to call whomever you’d like,” Lane said, ever a stickler for the rules. “You get a crack at the phone, same as Greyson. But come on, Marley.” He exhaled in a slow leak. “You’re my best friend’s little sister, and you’re sitting in my jail cell. You didn’t really think I wouldn’t call him, did you?”

  Marley’s scowl dug in, good and hard. “I don’t need my brothers to bail me out.”

  “Look, I know y’all are still working through some things, but they care, okay? Plus, you might not be crazy about your family bailing you out, but someone needs to do it,” Lane pointed out quietly.

  There was no denying that the big oaf was right, at least about bail. Not that it hadn’t made Greyson want to spit fire when he’d applied the little nugget of reality to his own situation, because, yeah, it so freaking had. He figured he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. What he hadn’t figured was that Marley would go the same route, once again forgoing the easy out of letting her brothers or her father come to her rescue. Tobias Cross was a righteous old SOB, but he’d always had a reputation for being a do-gooder. Greyson had zero goddamned doubt that, even with the jam she’d landed herself in, the old man would never hang Marley out to dry.

  Weird that she didn’t seem to want to give him the chance to prove it.

  For once and for all, think about shit that matters! Lord knows your farm isn’t going to tend itself.

  Greyson made a sound that didn’t consider being anything other than impolite. “I don’t mean to break up this truly touching moment, here, but can we get on with it so I can stop being handcuffed to this jail cell and start getting on with my life, please?”

  “Put a lid on it, Whittaker,” Lane said, although—yessss—he continued his trip closer to unlock the cuffs, freeing Greyson’s wrist with an economy of movement. “It’s not as if you’ve got a hot date, or anything.”

  The words skittered dangerously close to the ugly truth, and Greyson made an attempt at a smile that didn’t take.

  “I don’t think Judge Abernathy would appreciate your lack of consideration,” he volleyed.

  Lane grumbled under his breath, but at least he seemed to have the epiphany that they were wasting time. “Whatever. Let’s go.”

  They went through the whole mug shot/fingerprinting/phone call process without exchanging more than the necessary Q and A, which was fine by Greyson. Lane waked him back to the cell, unlocking the thing and sliding the door open with a clang.

  “Okay, Marley. Your turn,” Lane said, gesturing to the wide-open space behind him.

  Marley hesitated. The hitch lasted only long enough to send Greyson’s brows up, though, before she swung her boots to the floor and pushed herself to standing, then breezed coolly out of the cell. She smelled like oatmeal cookies, warm and soft and sweet, which was the complete opposite of how she was.

  And didn’t that just trip his fucking trigger?

  You know what, screw this. He didn’t care that it was smack dab in the middle of both the week and the growing season. He was going into Camden Valley tonight to fix his sex drought, good and proper.

  After Lane finished processing Marley, and Greyson spent his time thinking about tall blondes who looked nothing like her, Woody came back to the cell to spring Greyson for the trip to the courthouse. Calling it a trip was, to be honest, a stretch, since the whole thing involved more of a quick stroll than anything else. Woody led the way, with Marley and Greyson in the middle and Lane at their backs. Marley walked the way she did everything else, full of chin-up attitude that was far hotter than it had a right to be. Greyson forced himself to focus on the steps it took to get him over the sun-bleached sidewalk connecting the police station to the front of the courthouse property, then the bricked stairs to the building itself, and finally, through the massive doors of the front entrance.

  The courthouse was one of the oldest buildings in Millhaven, second only to the church on the opposite side of Town Street’s main square. Like the church, and most other buildings in Millhaven, come to think on it, it had also been beautifully maintained, with nearly all of the architecture having been either left intact or updated as needed to keep with the original, Southern small-town style. Tan on black marble floors checkerboarded out beneath Greyson’s feet as he moved through the metal detectors—the only obvious update the courthouse had seen in decades—then fell back into step beside Marley as they walked past large windows, sturdy benches, and darkly paneled wood doors adorned with brass plates noting room numbers and office names. When they arrived outside the main courtroom, Greyson’s heart began to beat faster against his will, but he stuffed the feeling down in favor of an extra helping of his usual non-committal scowl.

  “What now?” he asked. “Do you want to handcuff me to the judge’s bench?”

  “Do you really want to tempt me, when you know she wouldn’t question it if I did?” Lane asked back, and, shit. He had a point. Most folks in town called Judge Abernathy “eccentric”, which, Greyson supposed, was the polite word for it. He’d always gone with “a couple eggs shy of a dozen”, himself. Either way, whatever he was in for with her couldn’t be good.

  Lane must’ve taken Greyson’s lack of immediate response as a concession, because he continued quietly. “You’re the only two on the docket. When the judge comes out, Orville will call your cases, and I’ll escort you to the defendant’s table when it’s your turn. Then the judge will read the charges and ask you how you plead, and Vernon’ll ask for a certain amount for bail.”

  “Sorry, who?” Marley blinked. Lane must’ve realized in the same moment Greyson did that she was out of her element, and he shook his head in apology.

  “Orville and Vernon Stackhouse. They’re identical twins. One’s the bailiff, and the other is Millhaven’s prosecutor.”

  “The prosecutor,” she repeated, and although her demeanor remained bulletproof and her stare didn’t waver, she paled just slightly enough to give herself away.

  Lane nodded. “Yes. Since you both declined an attorney”—his gaze flicked over Marley, but she returned it with that blue stare that still wasn’t budging, so he continued—“you’ll answer all of her questions yourself, then she’ll set bail and give you both trial dates. Any questions?”

  “Nope,” Greyson said, trying to
ignore the queasy feeling that the thought of a trial date had sent to the depths of his belly. Marley, who had been oddly quiet ever since Lane had taken her for processing, simply shook her head.

  “Good.” Lane nodded. “Then let’s go.”

  He moved forward, leading them down the aisle bisecting the large, rectangular courtroom. The population of Millhaven being what it was (or, more to the point, what it wasn’t), the high-ceilinged room itself was mostly empty, the bench seats of the gallery occupied only by Owen, Hunter, and Eli Cross—all of whom wore matching, terribly worried expressions—and Greyson’s sister, Kelsey, who looked more ticked off than troubled.

  Gut dropping, Greyson added throttle Billy Masterson and his big goddamned mouth to his list of things to do when he got out of this mess. He followed Lane to the front of the courtroom, where he had the spectacular luck of having to sit next to Marley on one side and Lane on the other. The big guy arranged just enough space between them to ensure that incidental contact was out of the question. Marley kept her distance, too, but somehow, Greyson managed to feel the tension in her left shoulder with his right anyway, the warmth of her bare leg next to his seeming to melt through his jeans and slide right under his skin.

  “All rise,” came Orville’s monotone, not a nanosecond too soon for both Greyson’s dick and his sanity. “This court is now in session. The honorable Judge Pearl Abernathy presiding.”

  For all the power she held in the eyes of the law, Judge Abernathy couldn’t have looked the part any less. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds even, and that was probably in her robes and soaked to the skin. Her gray hair was pulled back into a tidy bun that made her already-prominent cheekbones stand out like the curves on a full, ripe apple, and her reading glasses—this pair with bright purple frames, although that could change on a dime depending on which of the two dozen pairs in her arsenal was closest to her grasp at any given moment—magnified her already-large eyes to nearly doll-like status.