Return of the Bad Girl Read online

  She resisted the urge to close her eyes in an effort to block out the memories clawing to the surface. Who knew someone so beautiful could be so rotten?

  “Cat got your tongue, sweet Caroline?”

  “Don’t struggle, sweet Caroline.”

  Fifteen years had passed since that night, and his words, his tone, still made her skin crawl with disgust.

  Her father had asked her to attend a dinner party at Senator Jenner’s home in Boise, where they were going to spend the night. It wasn’t the first time she’d met the senator’s son, Kyle, but his attention on her was definitely new. He’d spent the whole night courting her, fetching her drinks and sweets, and dancing with her out on the porch. She’d felt like a princess.

  Until she’d been woozy and excused herself to go lie down upstairs. Kyle had offered to help her, but she’d said she would be fine. Before she blacked out, she remembered feeling weightless and dreamy but somehow different from the sensation of being drunk. Besides, she hadn’t been drinking alcohol that night.

  Later, she woke up in pain. Kyle was on top of her. Inside her. He was raping her, and she was too dizzy, too weak, to do much but whimper and cry.

  “Please . . . stop . . .”

  He hadn’t stopped, though; he’d laughed. He’d insulted her and mocked her until he finished with her.

  “A virgin is just a whore in training.”

  When she’d woken up the next morning, her memories had blurred together. Her head had pounded painfully, and when she’d tried to sit up, the room still spun. As she started to climb out of the bed, she’d cried out sharply at the shock of soreness between her legs. Caroline had pulled back the blankets and realized her dress was torn, her underwear gone. When she stood up, she winced, trying to fight past the fog and the hurt to remember what had happened, and then she saw it.

  Blood on the sheets.

  Nausea had rolled up her throat until she was doubled over on the floor, vomiting up everything she’d eaten the night before. A flash of Kyle’s laughter intensified the pain in her head, and she’d curled up on her side, sobbing.

  When her father had come knocking at her door to let her know they’d be leaving in an hour, she’d been so shaky and confused, she hadn’t been able to say more than okay. Once she heard his footsteps retreating, she’d changed out of her destroyed dress and stuffed it into her backpack. She had tried to scrub the vomit out of the carpet with one of the bathroom towels, but it only seemed to make things worse.

  Once she’d dressed, she headed for the stairs, but before she could take one step, someone had grabbed her arm and pushed her up against the wall.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  Caroline closed her eyes against the evil sneer of Kyle’s voice and whispered, “Let me go.”

  “Not until we have a little talk about what happened last night,” he said, pulling her into the hall closet, despite her struggles against his grip.

  “What happened last night? You raped me!”

  Kyle closed the door behind them with a chuckle, and Caroline backed away from him, her heart hammering as she remembered that laugh, mocking her when she was begging him to stop.

  “Now, if you have any thoughts of walking downstairs and telling your father I raped you, I’m going to advise that you reconsider.”

  Caroline would have laughed if her throat hadn’t been closing with apprehension. Being stuck in such close quarters with Kyle had scared the hell out of her, and his dark tone hadn’t helped. Had he always been so much taller than her?

  “It’s the truth—”

  Kyle’s forearm was suddenly there, pressing into her throat as he shoved her back against the closet wall.

  “The truth? The truth is your dad has his head stuck so far up my father’s ass, if you say anything, he’ll tell you to shut the fuck up,” Kyle hissed, increasing the pressure on her throat until she couldn’t speak. “I’m going to save him the trouble.”

  He brought his face close to hers, his disgusting breath hitting her nose. She’d reached up to his arm, digging her nails into the fabric of his shirt to get him away from her neck, but he just cursed at her.

  “If you tell anyone about last night, it will be your word against mine,” he said, releasing her neck only to grab her hands and pin them above her head against the wall. “But on the off chance that I am arrested, you can bet your ass I’ll make bail. And when I do, I’ll be coming not just for you, but your little sisters too. Val’s . . . what? Thirteen?” His lips ran across her cheek until they reached her ear, and nausea roiled again in her already empty stomach. “It won’t take much effort to get them alone, and when I do, well, they won’t be as lucky as you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I won’t bother to drug them.”

  Caroline shook with fear and anger, picturing Val fighting Kyle, screaming for help. And Ellie . . .

  “You wouldn’t hurt Ellie,” Caroline said harshly. “She’s only six.”

  “So?”

  Disbelief and terror clawed their way through her until she was heaving. Kyle released her as she doubled over, but his hand fisted in her hair before he left. “Remember what I said, sweet Caroline. I mean every single word.”

  Caroline had looked up into that icy blue gaze and known he wasn’t bluffing. His father would probably swing bail, and who’s to say he’d be prosecuted anyway? With the Jennerses’ connections, Caroline herself could be the one to disappear. Or he could do exactly what he threatened . . .

  Only, what were the chances they would survive the encounter? Kyle would be an idiot to leave behind three witnesses.

  In the end, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted; Caroline was scared out of her mind for her sisters and had kept her mouth shut for more than a decade. Even after Kyle had hurt another girl.

  Right after Valerie had started at Boise State, she had told Caroline that Kyle had raped her roommate at a party. The girl hadn’t pressed charges either, and Val figured Kyle’s father had paid off the victim and her family. Caroline had been surprised the girl’s parents wouldn’t want the man who had hurt their daughter to pay. If it had been her child, she would have gutted him.

  Regardless, the thought that Kyle had gone on to victimize more women made her stomach churn, even now.

  But because you never told anyone what he did to you, he was free to do it again.

  She had been a kid, barely fifteen, and scared shitless when it had happened. The possibility of reliving the whole thing for the world and nobody believing her had kept her silent. That Kyle might get off anyway and come after her family was enough to give her nightmares for years.

  Sometimes she’d wished she was Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth, able to say, “You have no power over me.” But life was never like the movies. The bad guy didn’t always lose, the losers didn’t always win, and the guy and girl didn’t always ride off into the sunset.

  And despite all the drunkards and bullies she’d encountered over the years, Kyle’s eyes could still render her catatonic. Just as they were now.

  “I’m . . . I’m here to see my dad,” she finally managed to choke out.

  He leaned against the door jam and tsked. “He’s resting, actually. Just fell asleep half an hour ago.”

  “Then why are you still here?” She was proud; there was hardly a tremor in her voice.

  “I’m just answering his phone and helping him. We’ve become quite close, you know, with Valerie causing him so much trouble and Ellie moving out . . . well, he’s been under a tremendous amount of stress.”

  The veiled attempt to place the blame on Val and Ellie for Edward’s heart attack wasn’t lost on Caroline, but she had no witty comeback, no biting retort.

  Instead, she said, “Just tell him I stopped by and give him these.”

  She held out the bag of candy, and Kyle took it, but before she could pull away, his fingers wrapped around her wrist and brought her close enough to whisper, “Wouldn’t you like
to stay and keep me company, sweet Caroline?”

  She jerked away from him and snapped, “Touch me again, and I’ll gut you.”

  As she walked away, he called, “Oh, how I missed that fire. For a second there, I thought you’d lost it.”

  As she climbed into her car, she caught sight of him kissing two of his fingers and waving them at her. She wished for half a second she’d gone with a lifted 4x4 truck instead of her little Corolla, just so she could climb over the rocky, landscaped yard between them and plow into him. If she took the house down too, so be it. It would be worth it to never see his smug, disgusting face again.

  Peeling out, she sped down the road, oblivious to speed limit signs. She wanted to put as much distance between her and the bastard as possible. She had planned to spend at least half an hour or more with her father, but that was shot to hell. It was only ten in the morning, and she wasn’t due to pick up the keys to her new apartment until eleven thirty. Maybe Gemma Bowers wouldn’t mind if she stopped by early.

  Caroline had decided several days earlier—right after the third night in a row of her sister Ellie coming home at three in the morning, giggling and bumping into things—that she needed to find a place of her own. When Val had offered to let Caroline stay at her place, she’d failed to mention that Ellie was already taking the spare room and the only place available was the living room couch. The first week had been fine, with them taking turns at the hospital, but by the time her father was released, it became business as usual at Casa de Val, which essentially meant sexy noises from Val’s room and Ellie’s midnight stumbling.

  So she’d jumped onto Val’s computer and found Gemma Bowers’s ad on Craigslist for a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment with private parking. She’d called Gemma that morning and set up the showing. The place was perfect, and they’d shaken hands on the spot. Gemma had agreed to have a one-year lease drawn up to be signed that morning. Val hadn’t been happy about the news, acting like Caroline was abandoning her again, but Caroline had been living on her own for too long. Plus, all of the “what have you been up to since you left home” talks were grating on her. She was used to having space to breathe, and that was exactly what Gemma Bowers’s two-bedroom apartment was going to give her. Space and an excuse to get away from all the probing questions.

  And, of course, seeing Kyle had sent her into a twister of rage and turmoil all its own. Even the shaking in her hands hadn’t subsided.

  She needed a place to chill out, to feel safe. A place to decorate however she wanted and to relax in when she got home, where she wouldn’t have to listen to Val’s disturbing sex noises or deal with Ellie tripping in at all hours, waking her up. Caroline needed all that and a comfortable bed. Valerie definitely hadn’t bought her couch for guests to sleep on, that was for damn sure.

  Exiting off of Main Street, Caroline turned down a narrow alley behind the row of shops. The older stone and brick buildings of Rock Canyon looked dingier from the back, but her new parking spot was behind Gemma’s bookstore—Chloe’s Book Nook—and right next to the stairs that led to her new place.

  Caroline wasn’t worried about the stairs, since everything she owned currently fit in her trunk and on her backseat. She usually rented furnished apartments to keep from having to sell stuff when she moved on, but once she had everything unloaded here, she planned on making a few shopping trips to Twin Falls to pick up new furniture and décor. She had been saving up for so long, it was about time she splurged.

  Caroline saw the parking spot, but as she began to pull in, she almost plowed into the back of a midnight blue motorcycle already parked there.

  What the hell?

  Glaring at the crotch rocket, she thrust her gear shift into park and turned off her car, not giving a tinker’s damn if someone else tried to come through the alley. She couldn’t wait to kick this asshole out of her parking spot.

  She jumped out and passed the bike slowly, reading the license plate with disgust.

  BBYBLUE.

  What a sissy name for a street bike. It was probably some jerk who was afraid of his poor baby getting scratched out on the street. But that was no excuse for taking her spot. Trying to cool her already-hot temper, she hummed the lyrics to her favorite Fleetwood Mac song as she came up to the bookstore’s back entrance and knocked. First, she would pick up her keys, and then she would call a tow truck to remove the motorcycle.

  Gemma Bowers opened the door, her dark hair pulled back from her face, drawing attention to the paleness of her skin. Gemma was curvy in a natural way and soft-looking, with a sweet face. Her hazel eyes were wide behind her glasses, and Caroline could see how she’d won the heart of country rock star Travis Bowers who was, from what Caroline remembered, a total hottie. And although Caroline hadn’t known her in high school, when she’d come to see the apartment the other day, Gemma had been very nice.

  “Hey, Gemma, I’m sorry to show up so early, but my morning plans fell through. Is it okay if I sign the lease now?” Caroline asked, wondering now at the woman’s deer-in-the-headlights look. “By the way, do you know who I can call to get a tow? There’s some douche wad in my parking spot.”

  Gemma opened her mouth as if to speak, but a deep voice out of sight beat her to it.

  “It’s my parking spot.”

  Caroline poked her head past Gemma to see who it belonged to. The man behind the voice was a panty-dropper for sure. He was leaning against the counter of the shop’s break room, but Caroline had a feeling he was as tall as he was muscly. Wide shoulders and rippling arms were hugged by the light cotton of a tight, army-green T-shirt, and she couldn’t miss the bumps and ridges of his pecs and abs—proof that this guy worked out hard, in all the right places.

  Caroline tried to say something, but her mouth was too dry, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth.

  She hadn’t even gotten to his face yet. How long had it been since a man had tongue-tied her with his body alone? Too long, apparently.

  Her gaze finally met his obsidian eyes—complete with ebony lashes framing them thickly, unfairly. His coffee-and-cream skin was smooth except for the hint of scruff around his chin and a two-inch strip of dark hair running down the middle of his head, like a short, tamed Mohawk. She could see the tip of a tattoo on the side of his neck, just above his T-shirt, but it was his smile that finally brought her back to reality.

  It was stretched wide—with an edge that told her he knew exactly what he was doing to her, that it happened to him all the time—and his arrogance was like a bucket of ice water. This man was dangerous, cocky . . . and he had stolen her parking spot. Worse, he’d called it his spot, and here she was, basically going into heat. She wasn’t this girl, the one who panted after whatever hot guy crooked his finger at her.

  Gearing up for battle, she placed a hand on her cocked hip. “As pretty as you may be, I am going to have to call bullshit on that one. Gemma leased the upstairs apartment to me and the parking spot along with it.”

  Tall, dark, and douchey stood up, forcing her to tilt her chin skyward and curse her lack of heels. She normally wore them everywhere, but since today was moving day, she had worn comfy shoes for running up and down stairs. Which put her about four inches shorter than normal; at five foot three and a quarter, she was on the shrimpy side when dealing with average men. This guy was definitely above average, probably six foot two in his bare feet. What really pissed her off, though, was the way he was leaning over her now, as if he was trying to intimidate her with his bad-boy aura.

  Please, I eat assholes like you for breakfast.

  He took a few steps closer, that smug smile never slipping. “Well, Travis, Gemma’s husband, rented the apartment—and parking spot—to me as well. So, looks like we have a bit of an issue here.”

  That threw Caroline, and she swung her focus to Gemma, who looked like she was ready to wring her hands and cry. “Please, tell me he’s kidding.”

  “I wish he was, but apparently, Mr. Moriarty—Gabe—met with my husband
yesterday. I didn’t even know about this until last night.”

  “And you couldn’t have given me a heads-up?” Caroline snapped.

  “I tried to call your cell phone, but it kept going to voicemail.”

  Damn it. That’s because her sister’s monster of a dog had taken a shine to stealing her things. Her socks, her phone, her underwear. By the time she’d realized it was gone this morning, it was dead, and there was no way to coerce information out of a dog.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, Caroline glared at the man who was trying to steal her apartment. “So, what happens now?”

  “Now you take your sweet little ass out of here and find another place to live,” Gabe said. Caroline had the sudden urge to flip him off or kick him in the balls. Maybe both.

  “Bite me.”

  “If you can wait until I get my bed moved in, I’d love to take you up on that.” His voice had taken on a dark, husky tone, and she told herself it was so not going to work on her—even as goosebumps prickled her flesh.

  The thought of those white teeth nipping along her skin made undeniable heat pool between her legs, but she had learned a long time ago that talk was cheap. Despite a short wave of curiosity, there was no way this guy was ever going to get in her pants. Or her apartment.

  “Tempting, but I’m not interested.”

  “That’s not what your girls are saying.”

  Following his gaze down, she saw her nipples were hard and pushing against the sheer bra beneath her T-shirt. Her eyes snapped back up to his, and she sneered, “So, I can add inappropriate perv to the long list of nicknames you’ve already earned in our short acquaintance.”

  “Just stating the obvious, princess,” he drawled.

  Before he could open his mouth further, Caroline turned to Gemma. “How are you going to fix this?”