Broken Justice (Justice Brothers) by Suzanne Halliday Page A

healing nicely, Lacey grabbed her backpack and made a beeline for the laundry room at the rear of the snack bar. This left Cam to putter aimlessly, tossing belongings in his bag and generally straightening up the room where he’d been staying for the last ten days.
    Try as he might to dismiss the Ponytail from his thoughts and just get on with the business at hand, he found himself fantasizing about what it would be like to spend hours each day alone with her in the confines of his truck. When she returned a short time later having laundered her meager belongings, he was struck again by her fresh-faced appeal and the way she tried so fucking hard to be invisible. He was of the general opinion that most women were high-maintenance while this one seemed hell bent on being just the opposite. He was curious to find out what circumstances in her life led her to the predicament she was in and hoped he got the opportunity to find out more about her. Somehow she’d managed to avoid saying whether she’d go with him or not, a thought that didn’t please Cam one bit.
    When the time came for lights out he tried to talk her into sleeping on the bed while he took the sofa but she would have none of it. He was too big for the sofa, she primly reminded him. Throwing herself down on the sofa with her back to him, Cam could only stand there slack-jawed at how neatly she had settled that sticky situation. Damn but she was good , he thought as his head eventually hit the pillows on the motel room bed. He didn’t know what had made him try for chivalry by offering her the bed since such gestures weren’t a part of his normal repertoire. His final thought before sleep overtook him was of what she was wearing underneath the hundred sizes too big t-shirt she slept in and whether she changed from the no nonsense white panties into something with less fabric and more lace.

Cam slept like the dead and awoke later than usual the next morning. He’d been dreaming about the Ponytail just before he came to wakefulness. Her indecision the night before had left him feeling grumpy and out-of-sorts. Not like him at all.
    He’d decided in a superficially dreamy way that if she didn’t want his help then fine. Screw her. He didn’t need a freckle-faced twenty-something to slow down his roll. In that time-out-of-time between dreams and reality, Cam had reasoned she couldn’t possibly be as inside his head as he feared. If she wanted to go on her way, he would happily drive her to the bus depot and be done with it. After all, he didn’t play the white knight for anyone – especially not a woman. He had more important things to do than babysit a blonde ponytail with a ratty backpack.
    The second his eyes popped open however a different reality set in. It took less than two heartbeats to realize he was alone in the motel room. What the fuck . He wondered if she had actually bolted in the night. Regret and a sense of loss made his chest burn. He’d blown it with her. Came on too strong, and tried to boss her around.
    Jumping to his feet Cam set off across the room to grab his clothes so he could go out and find her. Wait a minute . What? Go find her? Where had that thought come from? Hadn’t he just decided he was better off without her?
    He was a fucking mess and had to admit he didn’t know how to find the door at that moment without a valet, a GPS, and a personal Sherpa. A low, feral growl of frustration rumbled up from his chest and split the air at the exact moment his bare foot came in contact with her crappy backpack. Standing there frozen like an idiot, Cam tried to wrap his mind around the evidence staring him in the face. If not for his heart thumping wildly in his chest, he might have found two threads of reason to string together in quicker fashion.
    “Okay man, think !” he murmured grittily. Her backpack was here but she wasn’t. If her backpack was here, she would be returning, right? Hope started spreading through his brain.