Falling Free ( Falling Fast #3) Read online

  Falling Free is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2016 by Tina Wainscott, Inc.

  Excerpt from Saving a Legend by Sarah Robinson copyright © 2016 by Sarah Robinson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Saving a Legend by Sarah Robinson. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  ebook ISBN 9780804181426

  Cover design: Caroline Teagle

  Cover photograph: EHStock/iStock

  randomhousebooks.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  By Tina Wainscott

  About the Author

  The Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Saving a Legend

  Chapter 1

  Grace Parnell settled onto the chair at the Northwest Florida Reception Center as the guard led in the inmate with whom she was meeting. She sometimes consulted with clients in prison, but this man, with the world-weary lines on his face, meant much more to her than any other client.

  When the door closed, she leaned forward and gave him a quick hug. “Hi, Dad.”

  He returned the hug only halfheartedly, she thought, as though he knew. “Hi, honey.” With a fleeting smile, he sank to the chair and flattened his hands on the Formica surface of the table. “Any news?”

  In her own weariness, she imagined that she was as wrinkled and sallow as he looked, though at thirty-three she hadn’t developed any lines yet. The rock of defeat in her chest grew even heavier. “Our appeal was turned down again. I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand as his expression tensed, injecting as much hope as she could muster into hers. “Don’t worry. I’m going to—”

  “No, Birdie. I can’t do this anymore.”

  She searched his face, his Cherokee features more pronounced than her own; her mother’s Caucasian heritage had watered hers down. His dark-brown eyes mirrored hers, though his thick black hair had lost its luster. “Don’t give up, Dad. Please, let me—”

  “I did it.”

  Those three tiny words stole away anything more she might say. “What?”

  His eyes brimmed with tears, though they didn’t spill over. His voice was a mere whisper. “I killed him. The jury got it right. And I’m so, so sorry that I let you do all this. The appeals. The hope. All your work. I was selfish, Gracie. But it wasn’t just so I could have a chance to get out of here.” He squeezed her hand as she was about to pull it back and curl it against her chest. “I didn’t want you to hate me. That day they came to arrest me I looked into your sweet little face when you screamed at the officers that I was innocent. I saw your belief in me. Nobody’s ever believed in me but you.”

  Now the tears spilled over, leaving a glossy trail on his pocked skin. “I couldn’t lose that. When you told me you wanted to become an attorney so you could get me out, I thought that was a pipe dream. And when you got the grants and went to college you were so proud, so loyal…God, Gracie, I couldn’t tell you the truth, not then. Every time you came to see me I wanted to confess. But you were so full of hope and love, and you came to see me.” He lowered his head to their linked hands and whispered, “Please don’t hate me.”

  She stared at their hands as that rock sank to her stomach. All her blood seemed to drain along with it. “No,” she said. “You’re only saying this to…” But she couldn’t think of one reason he would lie.

  He lifted his face, racked with guilt. “I’m a terrible man. Not for killing Peters; the guy was a cheating, hateful asshole. He didn’t deserve to die, but it was bound to happen.”

  “So it was self-defense?” She scrabbled for something, anything, to redeem the situation.

  He shook his head. “He told me he wasn’t paying me, that I’d done shoddy work—which I hadn’t. And after months of listening to him call me an injun I told him to stop. So he called me a redskin.”

  Grace knew that their ancestors detested that name, a reference to the scalps of their people that settlers sold at trading posts right alongside the animal skins. “Reprehensible, but not enough reason to kill a man,” she said quietly.

  “No. But I snapped, just like the prosecutor speculated. Peters had been hammering at me every day I worked for him, treating me like a slave. I put up with it because I wanted to earn enough money to get us a better place to live. To be a better man.” He drew a ragged breath. “I’m even worse than a murderer. I told myself you were pursuing law for your own purposes, too. You had a need for justice, and you were helping other people. But every time you came to tell me about a setback it hurt you as much as me. You’d paste on that beautiful smile and outline your next strategy. I promised myself that if this one fell through I would tell you the truth. For once, I’m doing the right thing.”

  He had been lying to her all these years. And she had believed those lies, not just as a little girl but as a professional lawyer who prided herself on her ability to tell whether someone was lying. She’d failed.

  “Say something, Gracie. I’d even take you cussing me out over that blank look.”

  She couldn’t. If she let one word out, she’d release a torrent. Accusations, pain, the shattering disillusions of that idealistic girl who still lived inside her. He’d let her spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars searching for that one witness, that one shred of evidence the police had missed. She went to the door and called to the guard on the other side to let her out.

  She went through security and walked to her car. His car, the baby-blue T-bird she’d lovingly kept as a symbol of hope that he’d drive it again. The car he’d dubbed Birdie, after his nickname for her.

  The thought made her chin quiver. She wouldn’t crack. Wouldn’t explode or implode. The last time she let herself feel the pain was after the police took her father away. Her mother had said, “Good riddance.”

  But…but…Momma, he’s innocent!

  Honey, I stopped believing in your daddy a long time ago. You’ve only seen the buying-you-sweets and shiny-promises side. Not his simmering anger, his holding on to his persecuted heritage, how he blames everyone else for his problems. It’s like that shiny penny you found in the dirt the other day, how it was all tarnished on the bottom.

  Grace sucked in several breaths, her fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. She forced herself to turn the key, pull out of the lot. Drive.

  The route back to Chambliss took her into Panama City. She usually turned left on 98 toward home. But at the intersection resistance clawed at her. She needed to go somewhere other than home to her dining-room table covered in boxes and files. She turned right instead and crossed the bridge to PCB—Panama City Beach.

  The idea of sitting in front of a shot
of amber Jose Cuervo at a noisy bar filled her with a longing she couldn’t deny. Just the thought of the lime made her mouth water. She took the road into the touristy beach city made famous by raucous spring breaks. The roof came down, and she let her hair blow in the warm breeze that ruffled palm trees and blew red plastic cups across the street.

  Driving down the strip brought back memories of partying there when she was younger. The lust-filled gazes of men as she lost her inhibitions on crowded dance floors fed her ego, but their smiles and compliments fed her hungry heart. The romance of stolen kisses on the dark beach. The warm, safe feeling of being wanted and held. Just like that old song, looking for love in all the wrong places. Or, more precisely, the wrong people. Just because a guy said he wanted to “make love” didn’t mean love at all. She’d built that four-letter word into a romance novel.

  I’m not that naïve girl anymore. But I am still that hungry girl, she added with an internal sigh.

  She was no longer the hot babe who walked into a room and commanded everyone’s attention. That self-confidence played only in a courtroom nowadays. Working in a predominantly man’s world, she had to play like a man. She’d trained her ass not to sway and eradicated all those sensual gestures that had once come naturally. The only thing she’d kept was her smart-assed mouth, and that had served her well with the good ol’ boy local government.

  Most of the time, anyway.

  She booked a room at a hotel and walked to the Beach Shack, a low-key place with high ceilings, a long bar, and a large dance floor. Not that she’d be doing any dancing. Tonight she just wanted to lose herself in watching other people’s high jinks.

  It was early for the crowd, though, with maybe twenty people and not a one dancing to the music floating over the sound system. Not surprising, considering it was rock and roll. Sure, she’d shaken it to an AC/DC song a time or two, but that was another life ago. Another Grace ago.

  What had happened to her? Was she dead? She missed her sometimes. But in a small town who you were off hours reflected on who you were on the job. No way would she have Judge Willis or Sheriff Sullivan thinking about when they saw her in short shorts or making suck face with her date at the local pizza joint.

  She chose a stool at the very end of the bar, against the back wall. Hardly anyone gave her a second look, which was just fine. She wasn’t here for attention.

  Two songs later, the bartender brought her second shot. She licked the spot between her finger and thumb, sprinkled on the salt. Then she licked off the salt, threw back the shot, and sucked the lime slice. The tequila burned and warmed at once, prickly and soothing. Two shots on an empty stomach was enough for a nice buzz, but she didn’t want to end up on the floor. Note to self: order nachos with the third shot.

  She leaned back against the bar and scanned the place: a group of college-age kids, a few couples. Her heart jumped as her gaze skittered past, then returned, to a lone guy poured into a wooden chair at a table in the corner. Because his gaze lingered on her.

  She quickly moved her roving eye past him, so not in the mood for flirting. Shit, she was dressed to visit a prison inmate. Black pants, not tight in the least. Clunky pumps. An indigo shirt that showed no hint of cleavage because of the black tank top beneath it. Not even an underwire bra, which would set off metal detectors.

  Her gaze slid toward him again, because he looked interesting. He was talking to the waitress now; she took an empty highball glass from his table and replaced it with a filled one. His attention on the server allowed Grace to get an eyeful. He was positioned against the back wall, wearing a tight knit shirt. The black of it set off longish blond hair that fell away from his face in soft waves to the base of his neck. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he was so completely the kind of guy Grace used to find tantalizing. Rough but clean, good and bad. Hot, young, and juicy. An amazing smile, with straight white teeth. She took in broad shoulders and biceps that weren’t artificially grown, as far as she could tell from that distance. And that was as close as she needed to observe from.

  The waitress departed, and she had worked on her ass sway, no doubt. Sure the guy would be watching that little show, Grace continued soaking him in. Except his gaze shifted to her quite suddenly. And her heartbeat did this crazy thump-arump dance.

  Damn, she did not need this. She slid from the stool and went to the restroom. Standing at the mirror above the sink, she took in her reflection and sighed. What she saw was the woman who’d worked so hard to cultivate a professional image. To cultivate a profession.

  It hit her with the force of a football tackle. She had become a lawyer for her father, had dedicated her life, her spare time, to researching cases and hunting down leads. That inspiration, the very impetus of her career choice, had collapsed like a sinkhole, sucking her down with it. Saving her father had been the driving force behind everything she’d done in her life. No vacations, no fun.

  “I need a life. A hobby. I need to do something just for me,” she told herself. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and asked, “Question is, who am I?” just as a woman pushed the door open. She skirted to the nearest stall, studiously keeping her eyes nowhere near Grace.

  “Oh, I wasn’t…” She waved it away. Embarrassment was the least of her problems. She was in the throes of a full-blown, kick-me-in-the-ass identity crisis. She needed another shot of tequila. But first she unbuttoned her shirt and let it hang loose over the tank top. She didn’t want to look like a lawyer. Right then, she didn’t even want to be a lawyer.

  She caught the bartender’s attention as he came out of the kitchen and ordered her shot and loaded nachos, then headed to her stool. Damn, she couldn’t keep from looking for the guy, then feeling both disappointment and relief at seeing the empty chair. Until she came around the corner and saw him sitting on the stool next to hers, elbows bracing him as he leaned back against the round edge of the bar.

  She wanted to be annoyed, but a tiny part of her sang because a nice-looking guy found her interesting enough to approach. Forget that. And forget the part of her body that vibrated at the thought. Totally wrong time. And wrong me.

  She squashed that ancient part of her ego and dredged up the annoyed part. Really, a couple of exchanged looks, and he figured he could bag her?

  She had to make herself continue walking as though his presence made absolutely no difference to her. She asserted her professional, Don’t screw with me I’m going to nail your ass to the wall gait while Fallout Boy belted out how the woman in the song wanted to dance like Uma Thurman.

  As she came around and took her stool, she told herself that she wasn’t even going to look at him, but that lasted for about, oh, one second. She had to go right past him, after all. And he was blatantly watching her with the hint of a smile. How could she resist? All right, then, she’d go on the offensive.

  She sat sideways facing him, leaning one arm against the bar. “Let’s hear it. Your best line.” When he gave her a Whaaa? look, she said, “Let’s see. ‘You look like you could use a drink.’ Or how about ‘You dropped something…your smile.’ ” She studied him. “Hmm, you might even think you’re so good-looking that you can just wink and say, ‘Hey, let’s get out of here.’ ”

  “Here ya go, buddy.” The bartender set a bowl of peanuts on the counter, then retreated.

  The guy’s eyebrows were still raised in an amused/curious way as he picked up the bowl and held it out to her. “I came up to get some peanuts. Want some?”

  She wanted to shrink. The fact that he was clearly enjoying her embarrassment didn’t help. “I don’t do nuts, thank you.”

  “Your shot, miss,” the bartender said, setting the shot and the small plate with the lime beside her.

  She tried to tune out the guy, whom she could now see was dead-on gorgeous, with that easy, confident energy. The way she used to be, before she went to college. She focused on preparing her shot, aware that he was still watching her: lick her hand, dash on the salt…She paused, he
r mouth poised in front of the salty crust on her hand, and gave him the Move along, then look.

  Instead, he leaned his cheek against his hand as though to watch the show. He had more than a five o’clock shadow but not a full beard. She could see the smile grooves around his full, soft lips, and the dip beneath them that defined a strong chin.

  She licked the salt, shot the tequila, and took a quick suck on the lime wedge. It gave her a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach to see him rubbing the tips of his fingers across his mouth, contemplating her. “Did you enjoy it?” she asked with a challenging arch of her eyebrow.

  He gave her a playful wink. “Probably as much as you did.”

  She had to jam down the odd sound that wanted to emerge, which came out as a clearing of her throat. “Didn’t you come up here for nuts?” She nodded toward the bowl on the bar.

  “I didn’t come up just to get peanuts,” he admitted without the least bit of sheepishness. “You looked compellingly sad and angsty, and, given that it was, ah, compelling, I had to come over. But I like hearing the terrible pickup lines you’ve put into my mouth. So go on, tell me more.”

  He settled in comfortably as he waited. She, on the other hand, felt completely thrown off. And intrigued. Okay, she’d play. It would occupy her scrambled mind for a few minutes, until her prickly side finally pushed him away.

  “Let me see.” She licked a salt flake off her hand as she tried to think of more. “Aha.” She tilted her head and sort of got right up into his face without meaning to, blinking dreamily. “Do you have a map? I seem to be getting lost in your eyes.” He groaned in mock disgust while laughing at the same time, and she said, “Your turn.”

  He splayed his hand against his chest. “Me? Hmm, let me see.” He drummed his fingers for a few seconds, gazing at the ceiling in thought. “Okay, got one. Have you been to the doctor lately? ’Cause I think you’re lacking some vitamin Me.”