3. Daisy
CHAPTER 3
DAISY
I knew I’d have to give the truck back. I don’t even want it. But I hadn’t counted on them tracking me so easily.
Apparently, the truck itself has GPS built into it. As soon as they woke up, they knew where I was, and my phone hasn’t stopped blowing up since.
Now they’ve arrived.
At no point in the last six hours of my mother and step-father finding me in Jackpot, Nevada and telling me not to move another muscle, because they were hot on my tail, did I think that I was actually going to pull off this absolutely bananas plan.
But now that my cowboy—Zane—is glaring down at them, a wave of wild relief slams into me.
This just might work.
Unfortunately, that overly optimistic thought is immediately followed by a chirp of a siren and red and blue lights lighting up the open door to our motel room.
“You called the cops on your own kid?” Zane bites out. “Didn’t even give her a chance to make this right?”
“Daisy’s nothing but trouble,” my mother says, sending a sharp pain straight through my chest.
“What’s going on here, folks?” The question is followed by a car door closing, then a sheriff’s deputy steps into view behind my stepfather.
“A simple misunderstanding, officer,” Zane says confidently. “My fiancé’s parents here don’t approve of us eloping, you see.”
Maybe kidnapping him wasn’t the worst impulsive idea I’ve ever had.
“Wait just a minute,” my stepfather snarls. “That’s not?—”
“One at a time, one at a time,” the deputy says. He pulls out a notebook. “Let’s start with your names. You first, cowboy.”
“Zane Lowry.”
The deputy looks at me next. “And your bride-to-be?”
“Daisy—” I start to say.
“Ask him,” my mother sneers, pointing at Zane.
I shove our marriage license into his hand, grabbing his attention.
“Daisy Vincent,” he says, and it rolls off his tongue like this isn’t the first second he’s known my whole name. “Daisy Marie Vincent. My little hellion.”
“Doesn’t matter if he knows her name,” my stepfather spits. “The brat still stole my truck.”
The deputy pulls himself up tall. “That’s a serious charge, Mr….”
“Garrow. Neil Garrow of Grassland, Wyoming. This is my wife, Peggy. Daisy is her daughter. I didn’t get her until it was too late, or she’d have turned out different.”
Zane wraps his arm around my shoulders, drawing me into his side. “You can take the truck, Garrow.”
“And let her off scot-free? I don’t think so. Officer, I want these two charged with the theft of my truck.”
The deputy looks back and forth between us. “Do you have proof of ownership, miss?”
I shrink back, Zane’s arm the only thing keeping me firmly in place. “I assumed it was in the glove box.”
Neil laughs harshly and pulls out his wallet, waving his registration papers in the air. “I have them.”
“I just borrowed it because there was no other way off your?—”
“All right, we’ll work this out down at the station. Mr. and Mrs. Garrow, please step aside. Daisy Vincent, you’re under arrest.”
Zane steps between us, putting his back to the deputy. “Do not say anything, Daisy. You understand me? Nothing. Zip those pretty lips and let me handle this.”
“Make sure they see the marriage license,” I say in a rush as the deputy pulls me out of the motel room.
Zane’s fist tightens around the paper in perfect synchronization with the cold metal of the handcuffs closing around my wrists.
We’re transported to the police station in separate vehicles, my mother and step-father in hot pursuit.
When we first get there, I’m taken into an interrogation room, but I remember what Zane said, and I don’t say anything at all.
My lips are zipped.
After an hour, they put me in a holding cell that smells like my cowboy, and I realize they had him waiting here while they were grilling me. And now he must be in that room. His turn to be questioned for a crime—crimes?—that he had nothing to do with.
Nervous butterflies riot in my belly.
Ugly guilt twists there, too, lower down.
But every few minutes, when I catch the sound of my mother screeching at someone about how they need justice—ha!—the guilt recedes, beaten back by those butterflies flying faster, desperately trying to get free.
Just like me.
I was right to leave. My method of departing…I could have made different choices. If I had, then I wouldn’t have involved Zane in any of this.
Zane Andrew Lowry. That was the name on his driver’s license. He’s ten years older than me, although he seems like many decades more mature.
You met him, so to speak, because of a bar fight.
Well, more mature in some ways.
These back-and-forth thoughts consume me so much that I don’t notice Zane being brought back to the cell. Not until the key is turned in the lock and the heavy metal door slides open.
I jump to my feet as he stalks in, tension radiating off every inch of his extra large frame.
“Sit down, angel,” he growls.
“What did you?—”
“Saying nothing extends to while we’re in this cell together,” he snaps.
And that’s when I realize that he won’t look me in the eye.
“Did you tell them?—”
“Daisy.”
I go quiet.
This plan…it really falls apart if I think about it for a second. Cold fear slithers up my spine.
There’s nothing for a moment.
Then he slowly exhales.
Instead of talking, he takes me by the arm and drags me to the furthest corner of the cell, where he sprawls on the bench. He braces his long, heavy legs against the floor before yanking me into his lap.
I squeak as he wraps his arms around me, muttering something I don’t fully catch about demons and cuddling.
“Hold still,” he grunts against my ear. “This is how we can talk, got it?”
Oh.
Right.
I turn my face, pressing my cheek against his, and I breathe in the scent of him. If anyone else had been in a bar fight, then spent hours passed out in a car—and then a motel room—they wouldn’t smell great.
Zane Lowry smells like old books and worn leather. He smells like a cabin in the woods that has stood the test of time. There’s a touch of?—
“Are you sniffing me?”
I go still again. “Of course not.”
“That was the world’s longest inhale, demon girl.”
“Demon girl?”
“That was a test.”
“I don’t get it.”
He exhales and tugs on my hair. “Never mind. I’ve made a call. We’ll have a lawyer coming to bail us out very soon.”
My stomach twists at the cost of a lawyer. “Who did you call?”
“Don’t worry about it. Someone who could find us a lawyer. Right now, we need to look like we’re desperately in love. Try to act as if you enjoy being in my arms, angel. You’re stiff as a board.”
“It’s just—” I shift nervously against him, sliding off my perch high atop his thigh, and my butt settles right against a very obvious erection. “Oh.”
His grip on me tightens. “Playing my part as the eager bridegroom.”
“How are you turned on right now?”
“Maybe reckless, messy little girls are my type,” he says sarcastically.
“I’m not little. And I’m not a girl.” From the glower, I definitely don’t think I’m his type, either. Because there’s no denying that I am both reckless and messy.
“Younger than me.” He recites my birthdate. “Memorized it in the back of a cop car. Had to learn about my wife-to-be somehow. Still some gaps in my understanding of how we fell in love, though. You want to fill me in on the rest of this story?”
“I didn’t get that far.”
“All right. Then we’ll do this together. It was love at first sight. I thought you were an angel, and before we knew it, I was grinding against you and promising to fill you with babies.”
“I’m not going to tell a judge that you…you…”
He rolls his hips, pushing that obscenely thick cock against my ass. “Demonstrated my need to breed you?”
“Stop that.”
“Remember, you love me. You want to marry me. And I want to marry you because you’ve got good breeding hips.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Does it feel like I’m joking?”
Before I can answer that, the sheriff’s deputy is back, and he’s opening the cell door. “Your lawyer is here.”