Southern Comfort Read online

  Southern Comfort

  Natasha Madison

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue One

  Epilogue Two

  Books By Natasha Madison

  Acknowledgments

  Becca without you there is no Southern Series!

  Copyright © 2020 Natasha Madison. E-Book and Print Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons or living or dead, events or locals are entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/ Use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.

  All rights reserved

  Cover Design: Jay Aheer https://www.simplydefinedart.com/

  Editing done by Jenny Sims Editing4Indies

  Proofing Julie Deaton by Deaton Author Services https://www.facebook.com/jdproofs/

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter One

  Olivia

  “Hello?” I say after two rings, and then I want to kick myself when I realize I didn’t even check to see who it was.

  “You have a collect call from an inmate at …” When the recorded message starts, I do what I’ve done the other fifty times and hang up. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and put down the phone.

  “Why can’t he just fucking leave me alone?” I wonder if this will ever end. Will he ever stop trying to call me? I’ve already called his lawyer and threatened to file a restraining order against him if he doesn’t stop trying to contact me. His lawyer assured me that his client would stop. Surprise, he lied. It seems I was going to have to get my own lawyer and do what I needed to do for me. I put my hands on my face, and my stomach grumbles. Looking up to check the clock on the stove, I see it’s after three. I’ve been sitting at Casey’s island since this morning. I love working here. The windows make everything so bright that I almost feel like I’m outside. He even brought me wildflowers from the field the other day to bring color into the house.

  “Shit, how did it get so late?” I’ve been working on the Christmas spread for the magazine. Since Kallie did not come over this morning, I just worked straight through. Standing, I walk over to the fridge and take out the plate of sandwiches that Charlotte delivered this morning along with fresh muffins. I also grab the bottle of wine and pour myself a glass. I’m not driving anywhere, and it’s almost five o’clock. As I pick up the glass to take a drink, my phone rings again. I groan, but this time, I check who’s calling first.

  Cowboy.

  “Hey there, cowboy,” I say after I swipe to answer it.

  “Hey, darlin’.” His voice comes out smooth, and I smile, which is silly since I live with him, and I saw him three hours ago. “Whatcha doin’?” I’ve never actually lived with a man. I mean, I’m not living living with him since I sleep in my room and he sleeps in his. But we do share the kitchen and the living room, and he does walk around without a shirt, which wreaks havoc on my restraint. He’s just making sure you’re safe, Olivia, I keep reminding myself over and over.

  “I’m just about to eat a sand—” I say with a smirk, and then something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye, and I stop talking. Looking over, I see a shadow on the back porch. I move my head to the side, hoping to get a glimpse of his face, but I only see a black jacket. I don’t know why, but my senses go into overload. I’m sure it’s nothing. Probably just my imagination playing games with me.

  “Hello?” Casey says.

  “Someone was at the back door.” The words come out in a whisper, and my heart pounds. Then I turn back to where I saw the shadow, but nothing is there.

  “What do you mean?” he asks, his voice tight now as I try to get my heart rate back to normal. But something isn’t right, and I don’t know what it is.

  I turn and start to walk back. “I just saw a shadow at the back door, and I was …” But I stop when I feel eyes looking at me and turn to see beady eyes looking at me from the side window.

  I scream out in fright and shock as the phone falls from my hand and the wine bottle that I forgot I was holding crashes to the floor and shatters. Looking down, I see the wine all over the floor around my feet, and then my eyes travel over to look at the phone and the picture of me and Casey lit up on the screen. When I look up again toward the window, I see him. He smiles at me, but nothing about his smile is friendly. Dressed in all black, he looks like he has his hair pulled back into a ponytail and a scar across his cheek. He screams evil, and when my mind finally places him, I gasp. I recognize the man from the picture Jacob showed me a couple of weeks ago of the man he found lurking on Casey’s property, pretending he was lost.

  “Olivia.” The man says my name and knocks on the window, but he doesn’t knock with his hand. No, it’s with the butt of the black gun in his hand that I didn’t even see before now. “I need to have a word with you.” My heart speeds up, but my feet stay stuck to the floor, and my stomach roils. “Just open the door and I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  “Olivia!” I can still hear Casey yelling my name through my phone. I want to reach down and grab the phone, but the screaming in my head takes over, so I turn and run down the hallway. As I’m making my way up the stairs, the sound of glass breaking echoes in the silent house. My breathing now sounds like it’s on speaker as I run to the end of the hall.

  “Olivia.” He says my name, and a shiver runs up my spine when I run toward the media room where Casey showed me a hidden closet. The sound of my heart thumping in my chest is the only thing I can hear as I turn to look over my shoulder. Seeing no one there, I go to the little closet that I laughed about when Casey showed me.

  “What can you possibly keep in here?” I laughed, and then he knocked me on my ass with his answer.

  “It’s a hiding spot for my nieces and nephews,” he said with a smile.

  I open the closet door and climb in, closing it gently behind me so as not to make any noise. The sound of my heart pounding and my heavy breathing fills the small, dark space. I sit with my legs tucked to my chest in the darkness as my eyes get used to the darkness. The only light I see comes from the crack under the door.

  “Olivia, don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” he says, and I close my eyes, hoping that this is a dream. But then I open my eyes again, and I’m still in the darkness. “Olivia.” He says my name again, and this time, I hear the floor creaking under his feet as he makes his way farther into the house. “If you make me find you, it’ll j
ust be worse.”

  I try to swallow, but my throat is closed off, and only then do I realize tears are running down my face. My hands shake as I put them around my knees, and I think about how this is going to end.

  How I’m going to die in this closet, and I haven’t ever really fallen in love. I haven’t even learned how to make my favorite meal yet. I haven’t been to Bora Bora and swam in the blue water. I haven’t ever had a man tell me he loves me and believe it. I’ve never been cherished. The tears now pour out like a river going downstream, and even if I tried to stop them, I don’t think I would be able to. My body starts to shake, and I can hear my teeth chattering, and in the tight space, it sounds like it’s full blast on speaker.

  The sound of his footsteps makes my heart stop, and I hold my breath. “Olivia, just give me what I want, and I’ll be gone.”

  I don’t even know what he wants. I don’t know what anyone wants from me because I have nothing. I know nothing, yet every single day, I get two calls from blocked numbers.

  “Don’t make me angry,” he says. His voice is getting louder, and I hear the creaking of the stairs as he climbs them.

  “I have all the time in the world.”

  My breaths quicken, and my whole body shakes when I hear his footsteps coming closer. “I’ve been watching you,” he says, and he sounds like he is right outside the closet door. Then I see a shadow under the door. I know he’s close, so I hold my breath, hoping he doesn’t find me and walks away. But instead, the sound of creaking fills the room, and I suck in a breath when he opens the door and stands there with a gun pointed at my face. “Hello, Olivia.” He smirks, and a shiver runs up my spine. I take a second to look at the man who is going to end my life. For what, I will never know.

  “Put down the gun.” I hear Casey’s voice, and I gasp when the man sneers at me, then turns around and shots are fired. I don’t know what happens next because everything around me goes black.

  Chapter Two

  Casey

  “Olivia!” After screaming her name in the phone again, I strain to listen to what is going on when I hear a man’s voice.

  “Olivia,” he says. My blood runs cold, and rage fills me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. A rage I’ve never, ever felt before competes with the helplessness of not being there. I look at the phone, and my stomach sinks when I know I have to hang up and call Derek, my second in command at the security firm.

  When I dial his number, it feels like forever before he answers even though it’s less than one ring. “There is someone in my house!” I shout to him. “Get the feeds,” I say and hang up before he can answer. Taking the curve to the farm faster than I should, I almost skid off the road with the rocks under the back tires.

  I call Jacob next. He’s the sheriff of the town and knows about Olivia and her situation. When it goes straight to voice mail, I take the phone in my hand and punch the steering wheel. I knew I shouldn’t have left this morning. Something was telling me not to go. I should have listened to my gut, should have known it was too quiet and that things would all fall apart.

  Twelve years ago, if you told me that I would end up owning almost half of my town, I would have laughed at you and called you crazy. I was a cowboy on the rodeo circuit making a name for myself. I wanted to take all the titles as rodeo king and then go home and raise my horses.

  Well, my family’s horses. Those were my goals and what I wanted to do. I mean, that and get married to my Lorelei and have a whole house full of kids. I was content in doing this because it was the only thing I knew.

  Family tradition was to take over the family’s mustang farm. But with just one word, one sentence, one heartbreak, the course of your life can change in a blink of an eye.

  I played Russian roulette with my rodeo career, took a bet on myself, and I hung up my chaps.

  Turning on the computer, I applied for community college. Who knew me playing on the computer in my first class would lead to me getting a contract with the military, which would lead to me opening one of the biggest security firms in the world. I now have fifteen international offices, and it’s just growing. But I keep that life separate from Casey the farmer. The truth be told, the only people who really know are my family and Derek.

  But my love is the farm where it first started, and it’s where I learned how to be the man I am. Seeing the farm passed down from one generation to the next, I waited for my turn. Except I did it differently. I think back to when I got the farm and how I forced my father to sell it to me instead of handing it over.

  When Kallie said she was coming back home, I thought it was strange, but after being away for eight years, it was a welcomed surprise. But then she arrived with her roommate, Olivia, who was running from something. Seems Olivia’s ex-fiancé was caught with his hand in so many cookie jars it’s surprising he still has both hands. He was arrested for embezzling, and her problems just got bigger and bigger. They thought she was in on it, and when someone leaked her name to the press, they pushed her into hiding. Kallie thought the farm would be the perfect place to get away, and I would have to agree with her.

  But instead of just hiding out, she found that someone was after her. We had a picture of him, but we still didn’t know anything about him or his motives. We knew nothing, and it just made this so much worse because it seemed we were chasing a ghost. We had to separate Kallie and Olivia, so it was a no-brainer that she would move in with me. I didn’t think anything of it, but now having her in my house makes me smile. The little things she does to put a smile on my face. Like opening a beer as soon as I come home at around three or putting notes on the fridge about making today count. I always shake my head, but every day, I look for that note.

  Forget that I want to have her naked under me. Forget that she is the most untouchable person I’ve ever met. I’m about to forget that I made a promise to myself to respect what she is going through and not push myself on her. But it was getting harder every single minute, especially with her in her shorts at night and her long legs. The only thing I could think of was having them wrapped around my waist.

  I shake my head, directing my focus back to the road, but no matter how fast I drive home, it still seems as if it’s farther and farther away. I dial my father, and I don’t even let him say hello before I blurt out, “There is someone in my house.”

  “I’m ten minutes out,” he says, and I hear him rushing around.

  “I’ll be there in two.” Hanging up, I hold the phone in my hand like a lifeline to her when it rings, showing me it’s Derek.

  “Tell me something good,” I hiss out when I answer him.

  “Okay, he’s going upstairs,” he tells me, “but…”

  “But what?” I shout at him when his voice trails off. “But what?” I repeat again.

  “I can’t find Olivia anywhere,” he says, and I stop the car in front of my house. I lean over and open the glove box, taking out the gun I have in there. Making sure the safety is off, I listen to Derek talk. “I am going over the feed from before, but I haven’t found her yet.”

  “Call Jacob. Tell him someone is on my property, and I’m going in loaded.” Grabbing the handle, I’m pulling the door open when he says the next sentence, and I almost roar out.

  “He’s upstairs in the bedroom on the left,” Derek says. “He’s loaded with a Glock.”

  I leap up the steps of the front porch and enter the house as quietly as I can. Walking over to the stairs, I look up to see if the coast is clear. I walk up the first step and then turn to put my back to the wall as I climb the stairs with my gun in my hand locked and ready. My eyes never leaving the entrance to the media room, my eyes on the hallway, and then I hear him talking. “I’ve been watching you,” he says. Now I know it’s the guy who Jacob found on my property a couple of weeks ago. He’s been lurking around but hasn’t been caught. We haven’t gotten anything on him, and trust me, we’ve been looking. My heart speeds up so fast as I try not to make any noise. Hoping like fu
ck the floors don’t creak while I walk on them. I make it to the top of the stairs and tiptoe down the hall when I hear him say her name. “Hello, Olivia.” A drop of sweat runs down my back, and I make it to the doorway. He stands there with his back to me, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. His black hair pulled back, his right arm outstretched as he points a gun at Olivia, and I make the mistake of looking at her. Tears are running down her beautiful face, her lips tremble, and her whole body shakes with fear.

  A black rage rushes through me. I’m going to make him pay, I think to myself, so I get into position, holding up my arms and making sure I aim. “Put down the gun,” I say so calm even I wouldn’t be scared of me. He turns around ever so slowly, and I know it’s going to be either him or me.

  It happens in slow motion. He turns around, his right arm outstretched, and when he faces me, I see the sneer on his face. Before I even realize it, shots are fired, and one of us goes down.

  Chapter Three

  Olivia

  It happens in slow motion. The man with the gun pointed at my face sneers when he hears Casey’s voice, and I want to yell for Casey to run away and let it be. But the words are stuck in my throat, and when the man turns around, I get one more glance of Casey. I think to myself he has to be the most beautiful man I’ve ever met, and I am thankful for having my time with him. Our eyes meet for one second before the sound of gunfire fills the room. Suddenly, all I feel is pain in my head, and I fade to black. I want to open my eyes and make sure Casey is okay, but the heaviness in them keeps them closed. My whole body feels so heavy I can’t even lift my arm.