Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel Read online

Isabelle

  I wondered if Ash liked meatloaf. Even though we lived in one of the more liberal and northern states, Bill and Hope had a lot of pride in a lifestyle best described as “country.” They wouldn’t take too kindly to the suggestion that meat was murder.

  As my lips drifted over my fork and pilfered a small bite from its tip, I only slightly relished the rich beef melting away on my tongue, salted and spiced to perfection. Normally, I spent the early minutes of dinner praising the chef, and would only lapse into thoughtful silence after expressing my irritation with every ornery creature on the farm.

  But, on that particular night, only one ornery creature was on my mind.

  My eyes tilted toward the window. It was too dark outside to see the yard; he’d be able to see me perfectly well, if he was looking. Not that it mattered. I didn’t even know the guy.

  I forced my eyes away from the window.

  I didn’t care if he liked meatloaf. He could eat or he could not eat. I’d left my inner-child behind a long time ago, and since then, I’d forgotten how boy-crazy she was.

  But the story was a fake… I was certain of it…

  Has anyone ever told you a story, and as hours go by, the more and more it falls apart?

  If he’d been shot by a hunter, the wound would have been harder to stitch. If he’d been shot by a hunter, he would have wanted to report the incident to the police. And if he’d been shot by a hunter, the blood would have been fresher, unless he wandered in our woods for hours. That was possible. And, if he’d been shot by a hunter, I would have heard a gunshot, wouldn’t I? Maybe he was just one of those guys who didn’t like to turn people in. I was like that, too.

  Except…the wound should still have been harder to stitch.

  I couldn’t shrug off that one.

  “Isabelle?” A soft touch on my shoulder drew me from staring hard at the blackened window to my left. I flinched and swung my eyes back to Bill…Dad.

  I had to remind myself to call him Dad, still. And Hope, Mom. It was hard to train myself to call them the two things I’d grown up believing were almost fantasies.

  “Isabelle, is anything the matter?” Bill asked. His large eyes, elegantly enfolded with wrinkles, seemed much older and wiser than his forty-seven years.

  I smiled. “No—sorry,” I said. “How do you get your meatloaf so moist, Mom?” I asked, turning to Hope.

  She, too, had always seemed much older than she really was. We had first met when she had only just turned fifty. Her hair was thick and long, but it had prematurely grayed, which she refused to attribute to genetics but to an abiding worry for each and every loved one she had (followed by the world at large). She wore glasses, but the eyes behind them were as sharp as a hawk’s.

  “You know the answer to that,” Hope told me, her tone shrewd; she, too, was scrutinizing me. How had they come to learn all my tricks within only three and a half years? “You don’t include the egg whites.”

  “Right.” I smiled and forced another forkful into my mouth. “I remember now.”

  Even if Ash was a liar, I thought as I dutifully demolished the plate (it would be the only way to truly stifle this low-key interrogation), I couldn’t criticize the practice. I had enough skeletons crowding my closet, as unsavory as any skeletons of his. The strange places I had known. The terrible people. I was almost ineligible for adoption by the time I met the Turners. I’d been in jail a few times, then. The hospital, too. I was no stranger to begging someone not to call the police myself, was I?

  I glanced at the black window again and decided to let it go, turning back to scrape together the last of my green beans and spear them, idly clearing the tray. I would bring him some leftover meatloaf after I did the dishes tonight. He would sleep, and in the morning, I would give him a ride into town. That would be it.

  I stood, strangely saddened to see the outline of the next twenty-four hours before me.

  “Are you done?” I asked, coming back into myself. “Can I take your plates?”

  Hope and Bill glanced at each other. Something silent passed between them. They may have been fosters who didn’t find their daughter until later in life, but they had the sharpened instincts of any birth parent.

  “Sure, honey,” Hope said. “All done.”

  “Me, too,” Bill agreed. They both passed me their plates. “Say, Isabelle, you want me to brew us up some coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” I said, not looking back at him after turning with my arms full of dishes. “I’m going to bed early tonight, I think.”

  I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to see the look they were giving each other.

  “It has been a long day,” Hope agreed after the pause. “I’m just going to go check on the chickens, and then, I think I’ll call it a night as well.”

  I was just scooping the remainder of the meatloaf, still marinating in its own juices, from out of its pan and into a Tupperware container, the dish washer churning in the kitchen, when a yodel of shock punctured the air. It was absolutely Hope, and my heart seized, turning to ice beneath my ribs. I knew before having any evidence that she had found Ash—or had he found her? Should I have trusted a mysteriously wounded and unidentified man to stay on their property?

  I bolted to the dark window, scouring the yard, but I couldn’t see her or him. Dammit! How could I have forgotten! The chicken coop was right next to the rescue shed!

  Bill bolted past the dining room, his rifle at the ready. The front door flew open and I heard his boots clamber down the front steps.

  “No!” I cried, vaulting after him. “Dad!”

  Chapter Six

  Ashton

  My chest heaved and my head spun and my wound, in spite of all the bird pills, was burning into me like the evil eye. I was sprawled shirtless on the dusty floor; thank God for the bandaging Isabelle had given me earlier. I must have fallen asleep…hadn’t meant to…

  And then, my bleary eyes focused on an older woman with an indignant stance and a puckered mouth. “What the heck do you think you’re doing, boy?” she demanded, as if she was talking to a nephew or a neighbor’s kid. As if I was eight.

  Glaring up at her, I wondered at how to get myself out of this situation. My sleep-addled brain had spilled out its memories of Isabelle, and I was alone in this hostile world. They’d want to call the cops. Old people always want to call the cops. She was unarmed, so that was good for now, but it meant nothing. The shed itself was full of weapons. I didn’t have a gun…but I did have a switchblade in my boot…

  I frowned at my bare feet. When had I done that?

  The door to the shed exploded inward with such force that its hinges relinquished their grip, and my mouth went dry. Another silver-haired avenger loomed before me now, and this one was pointing two thick barrels straight at my chest.

  This was how I was going to die. I was going to be executed like broken-legged livestock, in a dilapidated shed somewhere in rural Colorado.

  “Hope!” the man barked. “You all right?”

  “Dad!” I heard a distant female voice pleading. “Dad, wait! DON’T SHOOT!”

  The man lowered his rifle and turned to the approaching woman. Then, like fireworks, she came streaming and sparkling back into my mind. Isabelle Turner. Of course. My painkiller.

  “This is all my fault,” she rambled, pushing past the couple with as much familiarity as any rebellious daughter. Had her legs been so damn gorgeous earlier, or was it just this angle? I rested on the floor again and gazed at her appreciatively as she spoke with them. Suddenly, I felt kind of lucky to be sprawled on my ass. “I met him—found him—earlier—in the woods—he’d been shot—and I brought him here—”

  The older woman, Hope, turned her eyes on me, and I lurched up, tearing my eyes off of her daughter’s shapely thighs.

  “He’s been shot?” she repeated breathlessly. There was an undertone of criticism there. “He’s been shot, and you don’t even know who he is? Oh…Isabelle.” She looked at Izzy with
disappointed concern. Her expression reminded me of some kind of stuffed animal, its eyes glassy and fake with sweetness. How could Izz stand it?

  If she was anything like me, she would be longing to break free.

  Hope turned back to Isabelle. “We thought you were past all this,” she whispered.

  Isabelle’s jaw dropped. “Mom! I didn’t—I don’t know this guy! He just wandered onto the property!” Now it was Isabelle’s eyes’ turn to be huge and watery. Except, when Isabelle gazed back at Hope with such sad eyes, hers looked real. “Don’t you believe me?”

  Hope didn’t answer. It was the man who answered. “Of course we believe you, dumpling,” he said. He rested his gun against the frame of the shed door. “You just worry us. You put yourself in danger. That’s all.” His eyes shifted warily toward me. “What’s your name, kid?”

  Jesus Christ, they were both going to talk to me like I was eight goddamn years old.

  “Ash,” I said, my voice unusually sharp. I didn’t like people talking to me like this. “Ashton.”

  “Well, Ashton, let me take a look-see at your arm there,” Hope said. She didn’t look any more amicable to me than she did a second ago, but at least she was civil. “Just want to inspect my daughter’s handiwork.” She offered a small smile of consolation to Izzy. “I didn’t mean to doubt you,” she whispered to her. “It is the right thing to do to help a man in need, even if he is a stranger.” Then she turned back to me. As she did so, her eyes shriveled up into lemons again. “You’d better stay in the main house with us,” she begrudged. “I can’t have your wounds getting infected on my property, now can I?”

  Chapter Seven

  Isabelle

  The guest bedroom was just down the hall from my bedroom. We shared a bathroom.

  This was how the Turner house went upstairs: a long corridor, carpeted, salmon. On the right, Hope and Bill had shared the same exact room for seventeen years (this was an oft-touted fact during spats). Across from their room was my room. Next to my room was the adjoining bathroom, connected to the guest room.

  Pacing back and forth in front of the bathroom door, I wondered what Ash was doing. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he wanted to talk. Or something. And even though Hope had cleaned and re-bandaged his wound, that was several hours ago now. What if his stitches opened up? I was no surgeon. What if he bled to death in his sleep, and then we lost the dairy in the proceeding murder trial, and Bill and Hope were sentenced to life in prison, and I was cast onto the streets again, broke and unemployed, but it all could have been avoided if I’d just checked on Ash?

  I had to check on him for the good of the farm. It was as simple as that.

  Slipping over to the bathroom door and opening it silently—my own bedroom door was ajar, and even though the corridor which separated my room from Bill and Hope’s was carpeted, they still had ears like bats—I crept through the adjoining restroom and pressed my ear to the guest room door.

  I didn’t hear anything.

  I grasped the knob and turned it as gently as I could.

  The door fell open, revealing the darkened guest room, lit only by the streams of moonlight coming through the single bay window. The bed, a white wicker travesty with a rosy comforter and sheer white canopy, dominated the room.

  I crept over the carpeted floor and inched closer to the bed. I couldn’t see Ash, really, though I could hear his breathing. Was it labored?

  I slipped to the side of the bed and brushed back the canopy. My eyes were adjusting now…

  He was stretched shirtless on the mattress, his eyes closed and his expression tranquil. I leaned closer, admiring the way the soft, silvery moonlight laid on him, exposing his perfect musculature like a relief sculpture. I stretched out a hand, but I knew I shouldn’t. I couldn’t.

  Just his forehead. To make sure he wasn’t piqued.

  He looked like he might be piqued. And that was a sign of infection.

  I trailed my fingers over his smooth forehead. There was heat exuding from his skin, but he wasn’t sweating. If he did have a fever, it was a low-grade fever.

  As my fingers trailed away, they strayed to tuck an errant strand of dark hair behind his ear, and his hand shot to mine with the speed of a viper, wrenching me down onto the mattress atop him.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “Did you need something?” he asked, husky and languid. Knowing.

  “I—Because—” This was so embarrassing. “You look feverish,” I blurted.

  “Mm,” Ash replied, smirking up at me. His eyes seemed even brighter in the dark. “I feel feverish, too,” he confided, pulling me into his shadowy embrace.

  The covers came up over our heads, and the sensation of his warm mouth on mine was electrical in the absolute dark. Our bodies slid into place like they were designed for this. He bucked gently against me, his arousal also as exposed as relief sculpture, and the fingers from his good arm buried themselves into my hair.

  I murmured an encouraging mewl in response, my mouth cracking open for his tongue, and I moved with the rhythm of his body. The two of us trapped beneath the sheet was unbearably hot. I tore my mouth from his to drag in a breath and heard a door open in the hallway.

  Bolting upright, I tore the sheet from away from us and saw the thin band of light beneath the guest room door. The corridor was alight. Bill or Hope was awake, and they were both the type of person to nudge open someone else’s door—especially in their own house—and peek at them.

  I glanced down at Ash to find him gazing back up at me impishly, grinning and biting his lower lip. He wiggled his hips beneath mine playfully, as if to say, Well?

  Dammit.

  I signaled for silence with my index finger pressed to my lips, then ducked from the bed and darted back into my room.

  Ash let me go.

  Chapter Eight

  Ashton

  I woke up to the morning sun streaming through the big bay window, directly across my face. I stretched, and my mouth melted into a shit-eating grin.

  Izzy likes me, Izzy likes me, sang like a vibration through my fingers, inciting me to touch her. To create light in the darkness.

  Too bad the sun was up, and she’d slipped away like Cinderella at midnight.

  I lay in bed, arms stretched over my head, and took deep, relaxing breaths, doing math in my head to deflate the erection popped beneath the cover.

  The guest room door opened without a knock, and I glanced over at the proper Hope Turner, blushing furiously and staring intently into my eyes, never once acknowledging the morning wood.

  “Ashton,” she addressed me starchily. “Would you like to come down for breakfast while it’s still hot, or are you a fan of leftovers?”

  I glanced over at Hope and offered her a rakish smirk. “I’ll take it while it’s hot,” I told her. “Leftovers are the story of my life.”

  Hope smiled slightly in spite of herself. “All right, Ashton, sure,” she said. “Then we’ll hold the morning prayer for you.”

  As the door closed behind her, I closed my eyes and sighed deeply.

  Morning prayer, I thought. That’s precious. Rolling off the bed and swinging my feet back onto the floor, I dressed myself with a kind of chagrin. Because, dammit. What a shame. These were the type of people who had a little wooden sign hanging on a ribbon at the bathroom door which said, “Powder room.”

  They had safe, adorable, country store-furnished lives; it was a reality of which I’d never been a part. And I never would be. I put on my boots. I’d be out of here before tomorrow morning, and maybe sooner.

  As I strolled down the stairs and toward the sounds of breakfast conversation, I counted all the little things I’d never be able to have. The pictures on the wall: timeless courtships, extended family, roots. The orchard of fruit trees. I’d only ever be able to rent for the rest of my life, and from shady slum lords at that. People who wouldn’t check references.

  As I rounded the corner into the dining room, I found one more th
ing in front of me I’d never be able to call my own: Isabelle Turner, as radiant as a dew drop at dawn, gazing into the doorway with obvious fondness. And Lord Almighty, what would I have given to be able to ruin her in good conscience? To ravage her body like a coastal storm?

  But that was all.

  That was all I’d ever be able to have from a woman like her.

  “Morning, everybody,” I said, my eyes lingering on Izzy’s only an instant longer than they had to. I tore them away and rubbed my hands together. Licking my lips, I beheld the table, brimming with eggs, pancakes, hash browns, bacon, and sausage. It all looked to be homemade, and there was a pitcher of orange juice and another of milk in the center of the table. I dragged the savory notes through my olfactory, but I warned myself: things you’ll never be able to have.

  Not when you’re a fugitive. A criminal.

  Chapter Nine

  Isabelle

  “Hey, Izz?” Hope called to me from the kitchen, where she was doing the morning dishes. “Could you go down and milk Rose for me?”

  I took a step closer to the open doorway into the kitchen, almost certain that I’d misheard her.

  “What?” I asked, cocking my head slightly to the side.

  “Can you go milk Rose for me?” Hope repeated, this time enunciating clearly. “She needs it.”

  “You called me Izz,” I said.

  Hope smiled, but the smile struck me as defensive. “Did I?” She shook her head and shrugged. “I never do that.”

  “Right.” I nodded, feeling numb. “You never do that.”

  “So, will you?” Hope asked, blinking at me expectantly.

  “Will I what?” I asked dreamily, elsewhere.

  Hope sagged, becoming annoyed. “Milk Rosie,” she said, this time loudly and clearly.