The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

Chapter 9

“My daughter, Susan.”

It was the sound of Roan’s voice, clipped and cool rather than his usual throaty rumble, that finally pulled Mary’s gaze away from the child. Throwing him a guilty glance, she saw that his mouth had tightened, and she realized he must have completely misinterpreted the look on her face, realized he must think it was the child’s scars that had made her go shocked and still. Dismayed, she caught a quick breath to steady herself and returned the little girl’s sulky glare with a smile.

“Come on in here,” her father said impatiently. “This is Miss Mary. She’s not gonna bite you.”

“Hi, Susan,” Mary said, putting out her hand, “I’m very glad to meet you. Your dad has told-”

She was interrupted by the trilling of a cellular phone. Muttering under his breath, Roan snatched it from his belt and flipped it open. “Yeah.” He turned a shoulder to his audience of two, and then, after a brief pause, looked back at Mary, his eyes bright and intense. He gestured with the cell phone toward the salon’s back door. “I’m gonna have to…uh, I’ll just step outside for a minute, if that’s…”

“Yes, sure,” Mary murmured, tearing her gaze from his daughter’s face…and those coppery braids, so much like her own, once. “Go ahead.”

The sheriff vanished behind the swaying curtain, abandoning her to the company of his sullen and distrustful child. She listened to his footsteps thump through the storage room, and the outer door creak open, then click shut.

There was a brief, vibrant silence, and then Susie Grace’s small scarred chin lifted a notch. “Go ahead and stare if you want to,” she said valiantly. “Everybody does. I don’t care.”

Mary’s stomach gave a queer little lurch. “I wouldn’t do that, Susie Grace-it would be rude.”

“Well,” Susie Grace returned with a shrug, “you were.”

“I was looking at you. Because I just met you. That’s natural. But I think it’s natural that I would want to know what happened to give you those scars. Don’t you?”

Susie Grace wrinkled her nose and eyed her skeptically. “Don’t you know?”

“Maybe I heard something,” Mary said with an offhand shrug. “But I’d rather you told me.”

The child cocked her head and did a sort of half pirouette, the way Mary had seen children do when they felt self-conscious. “I got burned in a fire. So did my Grampa Boyd. So did my mom, but she died.” She threw Mary a resentful look over her shoulder. “I suppose you’re going to feel sorry for me now. Or else try to be really nice to me, so my dad will like you.”

Wow, Mary thought, and decided she might be forgiven a lie. “Actually, I don’t care whether your dad likes me or not,” she said with an airy toss of her head as she turned back to the work station she’d been setting up. “And why would I feel sorry for you? I was thinking what a lucky little girl you are.” She was startled to realize that last part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

And she was pleased when, watching from under her lashes, she saw the little girl’s expressive features register first surprise and then uncertainty. “What do you mean?”

Mary cleared her throat, which had grown unexpectedly tight. “Well, you’ve got a nice home, with a father and grampa who love and take care of you-I think that makes you very lucky.” She turned to study the little girl’s upturned face-drawn by curiosity, perhaps, she had cautiously crept close to her side. “Plus, you have gorgeous blue eyes, and I’ll bet you have a nice smile, too, when you want to use it.” Casually, she reached out to touch one coppery braid, then lifted and drew it over the child’s shoulder. “And, you have beautiful hair.”

Susie Grace jerked her head, flipping the braid back over her shoulder. “I hate my hair.”

Unperturbed, Mary laughed softly. “I used to have to wear my hair in pigtails when I was a little girl.”

“You did?” Susie Grace was doing the suspicious, wrinkled-up-nose thing again.

“Yeah-I hated them, too.”

Susie Grace giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth and ducking her head the way little girls do when they share delicious secrets with each other, and Mary shivered inside with something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Sheer delight.

Roan wasn’t in the best of moods when he finished his call and returned the cell phone to his belt. The U.S. Marshal’s Office, apparently overwhelmed and in a state of reorganization due to some personnel shortages and recent scandals, still hadn’t been able to locate either a case file for Mary Owen, or the marshal assigned to her case. Never thrilled to be dealing with federal bureaucracy at the best of times, right now his inability to make any headway in solving the mystery of his murder suspect’s identity had him ready to spit bullets.

He also wasn’t happy about the way that particular murder suspect had been occupying his mind of late…her face, those shimmering green-gold eyes coming into his thoughts in the dark of night when he lay alone in the bed he’d shared with Erin. It had been a long time since he’d shared his bed with a woman-any woman. He hoped that was all this was about. Guilt…the notion that he was betraying his wife. Lust…the natural awareness a man has for an attractive woman. Those he could handle.

He for sure wasn’t happy, though, about the pain that had knifed through his belly this morning and turned his blood to ice and his heart to stone when he’d arrived at her house to pick her up and found her gone.

All those things were on his mind as he made his way back through the storeroom, flicked aside the curtain and stepped into the powder-pink salon. All that, plus a niggling measure of guilt at having left his murder suspect to babysit Susie Grace, who Lord knew didn’t care for strangers at the best of times, and in the mood she was in this morning…

He halted. His jaw went slack and that and every other intelligent thought flew right out of his head.

Momentum had carried him several long strides into the salon before his brain registered what he was seeing: Susie Grace, his ornery tomboy daughter, sitting high in one of Mary’s chairs with a pink drape around her neck. She had her eyes all squinched up, closed tight, and most of what had been her long braids was lying in a copper-colored pile at Mary’s feet.

He must have made some sound, because although she didn’t open her eyes, Susie Grace’s face lit up with a grin. “Hi, Dad.”

He cleared his throat, stalling while he collected his wits-though his first attempt at speech didn’t show much evidence of success in that respect. “Uh…what’s goin’ on? What’ve you guys been up to?” The answer to which was pretty damned obvious, even to a man not much accustomed to the mysteries of beauty salons.

“I’m getting my hair cut,” said Susie Grace.

“I can see that,” said Roan, nodding. “How come your eyes are shut?”

“Mary told me to keep them closed ’til she’s done. But it’s okay, ’cause I’m scared to look anyway.” She gave a theatrical shiver.

Mary glanced at him, pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and went on with what she was doing. Roan winced as he watched another wet hank of red hair tumble to the floor.

“I’m giving her a layered cut,” Mary explained. “When it’s dry it’s going to feather around her face and neck, see?” She managed, with subtle motions of her hands and the scissors, to show him what she wouldn’t say aloud: And it will hide and soften the effect of the scars. “And,” she added, tilting Susie Grace’s head in order to reach a new spot, “it should be short enough so it won’t get in her way.”

“Yeah, ’cause I don’t like hair in my face,” said Susie Grace, scrunching up her face again in disgust.

Mary laid the scissors aside and picked up a blow dryer. She turned it on and blew away the stray locks of hair that had fallen on Susie Grace’s face and on the shoulders of the pink drape. Then Roan watched, with emotions he couldn’t name quivering in his stomach, while hands that seemed almost magical tousled and fluffed and coaxed the damp strands that remained into soft shining waves that swung and floated…then settled like the petals of a flower against the puckered, silvery skin that marred his little girl’s cheek and neck.

Mary turned off the dryer, laid it aside, then turned the chair to face the mirror. “Open your eyes, Susie Grace.”

Roan held his breath. Susie Grace slowly opened her eyes. She looked at herself for what seemed like forever…with absolutely no expression on her face, in a silence so complete he wondered why they all couldn’t hear his heart pounding.

Then she stuck out her lower lip. “I look like a girl.”

“A very pretty girl,” Mary said softly.

Susie Grace, being…well, Susie Grace, stubbornly shook her head. But her eyes were glowing, and her face…

It was suddenly too much. Roan pivoted sharply away to hide the emotions that must have been visible on his face…coughed to ease the ache in his throat…rubbed at the back of his neck where it burned with the embarrassment of so much emotion.

“Don’t you like it, Dad?”

The doubt and disappointment in her voice tore at him. He didn’t know how he managed to come up with a smile before he turned back to her, but he did. “Yeah, peanut, of course I like it. You look real pretty. You look-” he had to cough again to get the words through his throat “-just like your mother.”

He hurled one desperate look at Mary, then yanked his sunglasses out of his pocket and shoved them onto his face. Damned if he was going to let his murder suspect catch him with tears in his eyes.

But where did he go from here? His shocked mind was casting wildly about for an answer to that when he was saved, literally, by the bell-the one on the salon’s front door. It jangled merrily as several high-school girls burst in, bringing with them the cool spring air and all the noise and laughter and brightness only a bunch of teenage girls can.

They turned the volume down considerably when they saw the sheriff standing there.

To put them at ease Roan nodded and smiled and said affably, “Mornin’, ladies.”

Having got his feet back square on the ground again, he turned to his daughter and the woman who’d knocked them out from under him in the first place. He held out his hand to Susie Grace, who ignored it and hopped down from the chair without help, brushing at her face and shaking her head to feel the way her hair moved on her neck. Her eyes were shining like it was Christmas morning.

“We’d best be getting on,” he said gruffly, before he could get choked up again. “Looks like Miss Mary needs to get to work.” He looked at her, glad he had the sunglasses to hide behind. “How much do I owe you?”

She made a startled, distracted gesture. “Oh-just call it even for the gas.” A smile flickered, then quickly died. She didn’t have the benefit of dark glasses like he did; behind the transparent lenses her eyes seemed uncommonly bright.

“We’re going horseback riding,” Susie Grace announced, oblivious to rampaging adult emotions. Roan saw her glance warily at the high-school girls, but at least she didn’t try to hide behind his legs, as she usually did. Instead, she reached for Mary’s hand and said shyly, “You could come with us.”

He wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer. He thought she must be more than a little bit distracted, though, because she sort of strolled along beside them as they walked outside, letting Susie Grace lead her by the hand.

So there they were-his daughter holding Mary’s hand on one side and his on the other-like one little happy family. He didn’t know what to feel about that picture-whether it made him happy, or angry, or sad, or just confused as hell.

When they were outside in the alley, Susie Grace tried again, wheedling the way she did when she was trying to get her way and knew it wasn’t going to happen. “Come with us? Please?”

Mary gave a little gurgle of a laugh. “Oh, honey, I can’t-I have a lot of other girls’ hair to fix today.” She shot Roan a look with more than laughter in her eyes, the kind of look that passes between a man and a woman when they share secret thoughts without saying a word-and he knew then she was remembering what she’d told him about her feelings about horses.

And he didn’t know how to feel about that, either.

“We’ll be back in time to take you home,” he said, bringing himself back to earth and a warning note into his tone.

She nodded and wrapped her arms across her waist. Her smile was merely wry now. “No rush-I’m sure I’ll be here until late.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Susie Grace said hopefully, looking from one grownup to the other and back again, fidgeting in the natural way of little kids, now that they were away from curious eyes. “Nobody works Sunday, right? You could come with us tomorrow! Right, Dad? Can she come?”

“Well, I don’t-” Mary sucked in a breath and shot Roan a look of pure panic, and once again he knew right away what she was thinking.

“Not horseback riding,” he assured her dryly. “Shopping.”

“We’re going to the mall in Bozeman to buy me clothes ’cause I outgrowed all my old ones,” Susie Grace explained, hopping excitedly. “Can she come with us, Dad? Please?”

Roan looked at Mary, and she looked back at him, and her eyes seemed to shimmer in the soft spring sunlight. The same sun touched her cheeks with a warm ivory glow, and her lips slowly parted and grew lush…and ripe, and he swore he could see a pulse beating in her long, slender throat. Standing right there in that alley he could feel his own pulse thumping low down in his belly, where a ball of heat had formed and was growing hotter and heavier by the second, making him feel scorched from his scalp to his toes.

He for damn sure knew how he felt about that, and he was not so sure he was going to be able to handle it after all.

Because what he felt was scared to death.

“Don’t know when I’ve seen her so happy,” Roan said, narrowed eyes following his daughter’s progress through the food court tables on her way to the video arcade. He coughed and frowned at the coffee-flavored ice cream cone in his hand. “It was a nice thing you did, fixing her hair like that. Don’t know if I said thank you or not, but…thank you.”

Mary smiled, the cool sweet miracle of pistachio almond ice cream lingering on her tongue. “No thanks necessary. Every girl needs to feel pretty.”

He threw her a look, bright with a father’s anguish. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I…I mean, how can she-”

Without thinking, she reached across the table to put her hand on his arm, and the sensation of warm wiry muscle beneath a soft cotton shirtsleeve sent a flash of tingling heat through her fingers and hand. It had already spread into every part of her before she could snatch the hand away, and she laid her palm against her chest in a vain effort to still the turmoil it had kindled there.

“Roan, feeling pretty isn’t about what’s on the outside-it’s in here.” The quiver of emotion in her voice wasn’t only from the words, or the memories they recalled. “It doesn’t matter how pretty she is, if she doesn’t feel pretty…and vice versa, of course,” she finished in a more casual tone, when she saw he was studying her with bright and unreadable eyes.

To avoid that scrutiny, she turned her attention to her ice cream cone, turning it to find the spot most in need of licking. But she found licking it only intensified her awareness of that keen blue gaze…

Then, having taken care of all incipient drips, she didn’t know what to do with the cone. If she lowered it, which would be the natural thing to do, it would expose her lips, which all of a sudden felt ridiculously swollen, to his discerning gaze. She would feel…naked. And her lips were glazed, now, and sticky with the ice cream’s sweetness; yet licking them while he watched seemed almost unbearably seductive. What if he thought…

“Another way of sayin’ kids need to feel good about themselves.” He licked his cone unselfconsciously. Above it his eyes grew lazy and soft, as if behind the cone his mouth was smiling.

Out of the blue it occurred to Mary what his deep rumbling drawl reminded her of. There’d always been something about it…the tone, the pitch…that set pleasure vibrations humming inside her. It was like Cat’s purring. His voice made her feel happy and warm and safe.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled.

Roan frowned at his ice cream cone to hide the fact that he felt like he’d just been bucked off a horse. Oh Lord, that smile…

He thought it probably hadn’t occurred to her what she must look like when she did that. Or that she wasn’t supposed to be beautiful.

“Well, shoot,” he said belligerently, “I think Susie’s pretty, even with her scars. I’ve told her, but I don’t think she believes me. She just tells me, ‘Oh, Dad…’”

Mary nodded, and he watched her smile grow crooked. “That’s because everybody knows all dads are supposed to think their little girls are beautiful. It’s a question little girls ask their mothers: ‘Mommy, am I pretty?’” She studied her almost empty cone as if she’d lost her appetite for it. The sadness was in her eyes, now, too.

“Did you ask yours?” He smiled at her, wanting to bring the lovely green light back into her eyes.

She bit into her cone with a soft crunch and nodded. “Sooner or later we all do.”

“And what did she say?”

Her throat moved as if it was rocks she’d swallowed instead of a bite of sugar cookie ice cream cone. After a pause, looking past him she said in a voice without expression, “She told me the devil loves a pretty face. Then she told my father. He made me kneel on the church floor-I don’t know for how long…hours, I guess. Maybe all day. I remember the floor was hard…I remember my knees hurt, and my back. I remember being cold and hungry. I remember crying.”

Roan was used to hearing shocking things, but he couldn’t remember anything he’d ever heard on the job that hit him as hard. Luckily, he’d had a lot of practice keeping his feelings to himself, so he was able to respond in the quiet, even tone he’d use with a distraught witness. “Your father was a preacher?”

She nodded.

And there it was, finally-a small thing, but after a week of subtle probing his mystery woman had just handed him a piece of her past. A piece that might even help solve the puzzle of who and what she was, if he could take the time to look at it closely.

But right then he felt no flare of triumph at the revelation, no sense of achievement or success. Right then his mind was occupied by only one thing: the image of a little girl with shimmering tear-filled green eyes and the face of an angel, on her knees in a cold empty church, shivering…crying…praying. Wondering what she’d done that was so wrong.

As the shock slowly faded, rage took its place. The same rage, he told himself, that filled him every time he had to deal with a case involving abuse of a child. He never had been able to understand that kind of cruelty-never had and never would.

Stiffening his facial muscles and avoiding the eyes that gazed past him, veiled in a misty sheen that reminded him of dewfall on a gray spring morning, he tried to think of something to say, something that might restore the gray to sunlit green. His inability to do so had begun to eat dangerously at his self-control when he saw Susie Grace wending her way toward them, wearing the remnants of her Rocky Road ice cream cone as a chocolate goatee.

A final little skip-hop brought her to a halt beside the table, already launched into her appeal. “Dad, I used up all my quarters. Can I have some more? Please? I only need-”

“What’s this?” Roan touched her sticky chin with his knuckle. “Looks to me like you need to wash your face, kiddo.”

Susie Grace stuck out her tongue in a mostly fruitless effort to comply with that suggestion.

It felt good to watch his kid being a kid and be thankful for it. Laughter shivered inside his chest as he said sternly, “Nope, ’fraid it’s gonna take more than that. Come on-I’ll take you to the restroom.”

Susie Grace gasped as if he’d suggested she strip right there on the spot. “Da-ad, it’s the girls’ bathroom. You can’t go in there!”

“How about if I take you?” Mary said.

His daughter’s reply was a radiant smile, made downright impish by that chocolate goatee.

“Is that okay with you?” Mary asked Roan in a low voice as she scooted back her chair, nudging aside the pile of shopping bags that were stacked around and underneath it.

He shrugged and said, “Sure.”

Susie Grace threw him a look of pure glee. She reached confidently for Mary’s hand, Mary looped the strap of her purse over one shoulder and the two of them began to make their way through the maze of tables toward the restrooms on the opposite side of the food court.

Roan followed them with his eyes, followed them until the image was seared on his brain: little girl with tousled red-gold hair, dressed in a spanking new spring-green outfit, hopping and skipping with barely contained exuberance as she held on to the hand of a tall, slender woman…a woman who dressed in shapeless clothes, with her hair hanging down her back in a lank brown ponytail, yet who walked with beauty and grace and confidence in her step.

Then…that image seemed to shimmer and sizzle and melt like butter on a griddle, and another came to take its place: Same little girl, four years younger…same joyful exuberance as she clings to the hand of a tall, slender woman with fiery red curls tumbling untamed down her back…as she smiles down at the child… and walks with beauty, grace and confidence in her step.

And for some reason he thought again about the old Blackfoot horse trainer and the Spirit Messenger. He didn’t believe in such things-he didn’t. But something shivered across his skin and filled the inside of his head and every part of him, and he wondered whether it was a warning…or a promise.

He waited until he was certain Mary and his daughter weren’t going to look back, then buried his face in his hands.

God help me…God, or Spirit Messenger…Bear, Wolf, Buffalo or Raven…whoever you are: Help me. I think I’m in danger…of falling in love with a murder suspect.

It was late afternoon when the SUV pulled to a stop in front of Mary’s house, but at that time of year the sun was still high in the sky. Susie Grace had fallen asleep in the back seat on the drive back from Bozeman, stuffed full of ice cream and lulled by the sunshine and the quiet and the lazy beat of the music from the car radio Roan had tuned-with apologies to Mary-to a classic country station.

Mary didn’t mind that Roan seemed disinclined toward conversation, or worry about what might be weighing so heavily on his mind as he drove with his elbow resting on the windowsill and his hand covering the lower part of his face, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses in that way they had of seeming to be focused on something far beyond the road ahead. She didn’t worry about anything, actually, not even her own bleak future, and the silence didn’t seem awkward or burdensome to her.

Perhaps, like Susie Grace, she’d fallen under the spell of a lazy spring Sunday afternoon, and it was only lethargy that made her content to listen to the music-which she’d grown accustomed to if not fond of during the past ten years-and gaze through the car window at the cattle and horses grazing in spring-green pastures, and new foals frisking awkwardly alongside their mothers. And to allow herself, for the first time in many, many years-and only for a little while-to dream…

This. Yes, this life…this man, who makes me feel excited and happy…young and alive…and yet somehow…safe. This child, who makes me feel needed, and makes me laugh. Yes…this.

Like a child glimpsing a forbidden garden beyond a locked gate, she could allow her mind to drink in the fragrance of the flowers, bask in the loveliness…just for a little while.

She couldn’t hold back a sigh when Roan pulled the SUV to a stop and turned off the motor. The smile that hovered on her lips as she turned to him felt fragile and precariously balanced, like a butterfly in a breeze.

“Thank you,” she said softly, mindful of the sleeping child. “It was nice of you to let me do this.”

She couldn’t read his eyes behind the dark lenses, but his smile seemed wry. “I should be thanking you. Susie Grace had a great time. I know that was about the easiest time clothes shopping with her I’ve had in a while.”

“She’s a great little girl. And it was nice to forget…for a time.”

“Yeah.” He looked away for a moment, and she could see a muscle rippling in his jaw.

She stared at it, knowing she mustn’t, while her own jaws grew tight and her throat began to ache, and all her forbidden thoughts and dreams thrummed inside her head like imprisoned bees. That thrumming grew ever more insistent, until it seemed to hang in the air between them…until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Yeah, well-” Roan said, at almost the same moment Mary was saying, with a bright little laugh, “Well, I guess I’d better-”

He cleared his throat and slapped the gear lever into Park. “I know some of those bags back there are yours.” He reached for the door handle.

“Don’t get out,” Mary said quickly, nodding toward the back seat. “I’ll get it-there’s just the one.”

Her chest twinged with the guilty knowledge that somewhere in the jumble of shopping bags full of little girls’ clothes in the back of the SUV was a department-store bag with a lovely pale-green silk sweater in it. A woman’s sweater, slinky and sexy and feminine. It was the first becoming thing she’d allowed herself to buy in years-almost certainly a mistake, especially now. But it had been impossible to resist both the sweater and Susie Grace. Mary had just been telling her that redheads look good in green when Susie Grace had spotted this particular sweater. She’d insisted Mary should buy it. “You’d look good in green, too,” she’d declared, “’cause you’ve got green eyes.”

A mistake.

Heart pounding, vision shimmering, she reached for the door handle and yanked it open. And froze, half in and half out of the car as a sleepy voice came from the back seat.

“Mary? What’s goin’ on? Are we home already?”

“We’re just dropping Miss Mary off at her house,” Roan said. “You can go back to sleep, peanut.”

“I don’t want to go back to sleep.” There was the click of a seatbelt and Susie Grace was scrambling out of her seat, struggling to open her door-which Roan, of course, had locked with the master switch for her safety. She pushed on it, frantic and wobbly from interrupted sleep, crying, “Mary, wait-I don’t want you to go. I didn’t get to say good-bye. And who’s gonna help me with-Da-ad!” She gave up on the door and turned to glare at Roan, face flushed, eyes dangerously bright.

Mary gave Roan a look and a gesture of mute appeal; the last thing she wanted was for such a lovely day to end with Susie Grace in tears. Evidently Roan was of the same mind. He capitulated with a shrug and released the door lock. Susie Grace tumbled out of the car and threw her arms around Mary’s waist.

She wasn’t prepared. Not for this. Too many emotions, emotions she didn’t want and didn’t know what to do with. Emotions…feelings…thoughts she hadn’t allowed herself in so many years. Why is this happening? Why now?

She didn’t dare look at Roan. She gazed down at Susie Grace through a shimmering mist, patted her back awkwardly and said with a light laugh, “Well, I’m not going to the moon.”

“I don’t want you to go anywhere,” Susie Grace said fiercely. “Can’t you come home with us? You could have dinner with us. Dad-”

Mary took a deep breath. Reaching deep inside herself for the strength, she put her hand under the little girl’s chin and tilted it so she could look into her face. “Susie Grace, you know I can’t. Not tonight. Maybe we can get together some other time, okay? If it’s all right with your dad.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” Mary closed her eyes and begged forgiveness for the lie. “And now…if you want, you can help me find-”

But Susie Grace was appeased for the moment, and with moods as mercurial as only a seven-year-old’s can be, was already on to other things.

“Is that your kitty?” She was hopping and skipping her way across the grass to the front porch, where Cat sat on the topmost step, looking down upon them like a statue of an Egyptian god. “What’s her name? Does she bite? Can I pet her?”

“His name is Cat,” Mary said as she went to open the back of the SUV. “He very well may bite-he’s pretty cranky. I doubt he’ll let you pet him…” Having retrieved her shopping bag, she closed the door, turned around, and gave an astonished laugh.

Susie Grace was sprawled on the porch steps, nose-to-nose-literally-with Cat. As Mary watched, the little girl reached out, wrapped her arms around the huge tomcat and hauled him into her lap like a baby doll. To which indignity Cat responded with his usual display of affection-a head-butt to Susie Grace’s chin. Mary could hear the animal’s buzz-saw purring from where she stood. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, laughing.

The sound of a car door slamming penetrated the edges of her consciousness…then awareness came prowling over her skin, raising goose bumps, quickening breath and heartbeat.

“She’s good with animals,” Roan said, his quiet rumbling voice so close behind her she felt its vibrations in her bones. “Always has been. She’s always the one to find where the barn cats hide their kittens.”

Laughing, she turned her head to look at him, and his eyes were soft as he smiled back at her. The lowering sun was warm and gentle on her face, the breeze flirted with her hair like a lover’s fingers…and Mary knew she had never in her life been happier than she was at this moment.

So lost was she in the sweetness of those moments that when, a short time later and a little way down the street, a car started up and sped away, it never even registered on her consciousness.