The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

Chapter 13

“Dammit, Mary,” Roan said, “you were supposed to stay inside. What the hell were you doing out there? A sidewalk sale, for God’s sake. What were you thinking?”

Belonging. I wanted to be a part of it…the town, the celebration. I just wanted to…belong.

But she thought that sounded pathetic, so she didn’t say it. Instead, she cleared her throat and contritely muttered, “I’m sorry.”

Roan glanced at her, then shook his head and gave a snort of laughter. “That has to be the worst hitman I’ve ever heard of-or you’re about the luckiest victim. The guy had a hunting rifle with a scope on it. I don’t know how the hell he missed.”

“Luck,” Mary mumbled; her tongue felt clumsy. She frowned and touched the sore place on her cheek. “Something-a jacket, I think-fell off the hanger. I bent over to pick it up. That’s when the window…” She paused, a replay of that moment coming sharp and vivid to her mind. She fought to shut it out…had to shut it out, because right behind those images she could feel it creeping closer, the emotional meltdown she’d managed so far to hold off with a combination of willpower and denial. It was about to pounce…she could feel its cold grip on her throat when she swallowed and tried to laugh. “I guess I should be dead right now.”

It seemed an eternity before Roan responded, in a voice between a growl and a murmur. “Yeah. You should.” He paused, then added grimly, “He won’t miss again.”

She stared at him, swallowing repeatedly and fighting back tears. Wishing she could see his eyes, wishing she knew how to read him. But between his hat brim, the sunglasses and the hand covering most of the lower part of his face, his emotions were well-guarded.

He flicked her another brief glance and his mouth twitched upward at one corner-a hard little smile. “That’s why we’re not going to give him a second chance. I’m getting you out of this town, right now. I’m going to put you someplace where you’ll be safe until we get this guy.”

Something shivered through her…a chilling blast of déjà vu. The small, barren room…a strange man saying, “We’re going to take you to a safe house…”

“I’m not doing this, Roan,” she said in a low, uneven voice. “I won’t do it again. Not ever.”

“Mary-”

“I don’t care!” Her voice rose, both in pitch and volume; the monster was coming and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it. “I told you. I’m tired of running…tired of hiding. I’m not going to do it. I won’t…be…alone…any…more.”

“You’re not going to be alone.” His jaw looked the way his voice sounded-rock hard. “I’m taking you to my ranch. You’ll be with me. And Boyd and Susie Grace. Think you can handle that?”

She stared at him, her mind gone blank. It was so far from what she’d expected him to say.

He let out a breath, uneven and impatient. “Look-I know it’s a little…unorthodox. But it’s the safest place I can think of right now. My place is out in the middle of nowhere, so unless this jackass comes for you by helicopter or horseback, we’re gonna see him coming a long way off. Then he’ll have to get by me or Boyd first.”

“What-” She cleared her throat carefully. She felt as if everything inside her had shaken loose. Her emotions were vulnerable…uncertain and unformed, like something newly born. “What about Susie Grace?”

There was a pause. She counted heartbeats and watched a muscle work in the side of his jaw. “Like I said,” he growled, “it’s the best I could come up with on short notice.”

Mary went on gazing at him, while those unformed thoughts and fragile feelings filled her head like a cloud of gnats…or soap bubbles. Any attempt to grasp them she knew would be futile, so she didn’t even try. Finally she said in a soft, shaking voice, “I want to go home first.” How strange to hear the word home coming out of her mouth.

“Too dangerous,” Roan said. His jaw and mouth looked implacable again. “The shooter could be waiting for you there.”

“What about my things? I have to pack.”

He shook his head. “I can pick up whatever you need later.”

Anger-with the Fates, with him, with herself for her own impotence-blew through her like pollen in the wind. She sucked in air like someone about to sneeze and gasped out, “What about Cat? I can’t just leave him-”

“Dammit, Mary!”

“Dammit, Roan!” She shot it back at him between clenched teeth, her breathing quick and shallow. “I said I’m not doing this again. I mean it. I’m not running, I’m not hiding, I’m not leaving pieces of myself behind. I’ll stay at your place, temporarily, if that’s what I need to do, but I’m not going without my stuff, and I am not going without my cat.”

He gave her one brief, furious look, then stomped on the brakes, swearing under his breath. The SUV swerved to the side of the road and jerked to a halt. He turned his head to glare at her along his shoulder, and not even the sunglasses could hide the frustration burning in his eyes. After a long pause, he threw a glance over his shoulder, made a tire-squealing U-turn and headed the SUV back into town.

Roan was about as close to losing his temper as he ever got, though if he’d been honest with himself he’d have to admit the burr under his saddle probably wasn’t anger at all. At the moment, though, he didn’t give much of a damn about honesty. What he cared about was keeping it together, and anger seemed a whole lot easier to deal with than some of the other stuff rattling around inside him.

Stubborn woman, he thought, and wouldn’t let himself think about the anguish, courage and vulnerability that were there in her voice too.

Wouldn’t let himself think what a high-caliber slug would have done to her head but for a split-second quirk of Fate.

Wouldn’t let himself picture it, anyway. He was definitely thinking about it when he pulled up in front of the little clapboard house. All his senses were on hair-trigger alert and the short hairs rising on the back of his neck. He wondered how in the hell he was going to be able to check out the house without leaving Mary alone and unguarded in the car.

As it happened, while he was silently grinding his teeth and pondering the matter, she took it out of his hands. Almost before the SUV stopped rolling, before he had any idea what she had in mind, she opened up her door and jumped out. By the time he got the motor turned off and the keys out of the ignition and his own door open, she was already halfway across the raggedy dandelion-studded grass, right out in the open, unshielded, unguarded.

With fear and fury propelling him, he caught up with her in about two strides. He grabbed her arm-ignoring her gasp of outraged protest-and steered her away from the front steps and around the side of the house to the back, where he shoved her down beside the stoop and told her to stay there while he did a sweep for intruders. He was almost as surprised as she was when she obeyed him. He could feel her seething about it, though, when he came back and hauled her up the steps and shielded her with his body while she unlocked the door.

Inside the kitchen, he locked the door and pulled down the shades, this time making sure to keep a good firm grip on her arm in case she had any more ideas about dashing off without waiting for him to check things out first. Again, it didn’t make her happy; this time the look she gave him when he told her to stay put while he had a look around probably should have turned him to stone.

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” he said mildly when he met her in the living room, feeling a little more relaxed now he’d made sure there weren’t any hitmen lurking in her closets or under the bed. Somehow it didn’t surprise him that she hadn’t obeyed his order to stay in the kitchen.

“No,” she snapped, “I’m not.” She had her arms folded and one hip stuck out, and everything about her but the color of her hair screamed, Red-Headed Woman-Handle with Care!

It was an attitude Roan was well acquainted with, having spent a good part of his life in the company of red-haired females, but what he wasn’t prepared for was the little hot spot that opened up in the bottom of his belly, like a slumbering coal flaring to life.

“I’m through being meek and mild,” she bit out between heaving breaths, her eyes spitting green-gold fire, and the thought, Meek and mild? You’ve got to be kidding! flashed through his mind. But the urge to break into a grin vanished when she continued, and he saw the fire in her eyes was just one shaky step away from tears. “I’m tired of…of letting some-some man run my life. Like I’m a little child who needs to be told what to do. Okay, I’ve let it happen, but no more. I’m not a child, I’m a grownup, dammit. I decide whether to go or stay, whether to hide or not. My choice.”

“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice stern, grateful for the sunglasses that wouldn’t let her see what was in his eyes. He folded his arms and faced her across a barrier of space so charged with electricity it seemed almost to hum. “You’re right. You choose. Tell me what you want to do. Do you want to stay here, wait for Diego DelRey or his hitman to come for you? Or do you want to come stay out at my ranch where I can protect you?”

She stared at him through a long, vibrating silence, while the fire in her eyes slowly died. Finally… “I want to stay with you,” she whispered.

The naked longing in her face hit him like a fist in the gut. Reaching for her was a reflex. But she’d already turned away from him, jerky as a mechanical doll.

Stupid, Mary thought. Stupid! Oh God, Oh God, I hope I didn’t let him see….

But she had. She knew she had. She hadn’t missed the way his face…at least the part of it she could see…had changed. She was only glad he was wearing sunglasses, so she hadn’t had to see the pity in his eyes.

“I’ll just be a minute,” she muttered breathlessly as she fled like a coward to her bedroom.

She meant it, too-about taking a minute to pack; she had it down to a science. She began to pull clothes out of drawers and dump them into the suitcase she’d hauled out from the bottom of her closet, pausing long enough to call back to him, “I think I saw a cat carrier in the garage…maybe you could-”

She heard a growled, “I’ll get it,” then the thump of boots on hardwood.

She heard the kitchen door slam. And all the fight and defiance went out of her like air from a balloon. She let the pile of clothes slip from her arms and gripped the edges of the suitcase that was lying open on the bed, leaned on her hands, bowed her head and closed her eyes, weighed down by an overwhelming sense of grief and loss.

I don’t want to do this.

The packing thing she may have had down pat, but the leaving…that was another matter. She thought of all the places she’d left…all the people, most of the time just when she was beginning to get to know them…never long enough to feel that sense of home…of belonging. She had a sudden fierce urge to pick up the suitcase and heave it through the nearest window.

No more. I don’t want to leave again. Not this town. This is where I want to belong.

How insane was that, when this was the town where she’d been assaulted, nearly raped, arrested and charged with murder? Where, but for the sake of a sympathetic judge, she would right now be in jail?

All right, maybe not the town, but the people. Kind people, like Miss Ada and Betty. People who need me, like Susie Grace.

And Roan. You know very well this isn’t about the town, or the people. It’s about one person. Roan.

How insane was that, to fall for the sheriff who’d arrested her and put her in jail for a murder she hadn’t committed?

It was all too much…everything coming down on her at once, happening way too fast. She could feel emotions looming, piling up in her like snow on a precipice. It wouldn’t take much to bring it all tumbling down on her. And so what? she thought recklessly. Let it come. She would welcome it. After everything that had happened to her, after the long, long struggle to outrun Destiny, it would be almost a relief to finally let it sweep her away…

Without a car cluttering up the garage, Roan was able to find the cat carrier without too much difficulty. After sweeping off the worst of the dust, he carried it into the kitchen and left it there while he went to see how Mary was coming along with her packing.

He found her standing in the middle of her bedroom, frowning at a half-filled suitcase on the bed in front of her. She looked no less emotionally fragile than when he’d left her, so he knocked softly on the door frame and eased into the room much the way he’d have entered the cage of a sleeping lioness.

“Found the carrier,” he said, keeping his voice to a neutral mutter. “Now all I need’s the cat. Any idea where I might find him?”

She jerked around, her hair in tumbled disarray, her mouth forming an O of distress. “Oh-oh God. He could be anywhere-curled up asleep somewhere…hunting…visiting the neighbors… He always comes home when he knows I’m here, though. He’ll be here-I know he will. If we wait-”

“Mary…” He said it with a sigh, knowing the battle that was coming. “The longer we wait, the less chance we have of getting you out of town undetected. We can’t-”

She held up a hand. “No-don’t. Don’t even say it.”

Well, he’d known she was going to fight him on it, and she didn’t disappoint him. Her eyes were getting the shimmer again-the fire-and-rain thing that grabbed him in some deep-down part of himself that didn’t know how to say no.

“I’m not leaving without him, Roan. I mean it.”

“Mary-” He put his hands on her arms, gently stroking. Meaning only to comfort her…make her see reason. Honest to God.

She shook her head rapidly, further dislodging her hair from its haphazard moorings and sending strands of it snaking across her face, giving her the wild look of someone fighting her way through a tempest. “He’s not even mine,” she said furiously. “He’s Queenie’s stupid cat. I know he’s hateful and ugly, but she left him with me. I’m responsible for him. I can’t just leave him here. What if someone comes for me and…and hurts him? I can’t…” The words trailed off.

For a moment she simply stared at him, a strange fierce light in her eyes. He’d seen it before, that look, during his skydiving training. It was the look of someone about to jump out of an airplane…terrified, but committed. Then, to his utter astonishment, she reached up and took off his sunglasses. For another few seconds she burned that look into his eyes…then hooked a hand around his neck, leaned up and kissed him.

He barely felt the soft pillowing of her mouth against his before it burst like ripe fruit in the sun, flooding him with her warm, sweet essence. The taste and smell and feel of her woman’s body blew through him like summer winds, and remembered heat and sweat and desperate lust of the golden summers of his youth collided with the cold and barrenness of the recent past to form a storm cell within him of epic intensity. It slammed into him with a concussion like thunder. Heat raced through his blood, electricity crackled along his skin.

For a moment, stunned, he merely took what she offered. Then suddenly he was plundering deeper, greedily…driving his hands into her hair while his mouth bore down on hers, demanding more…and more still wasn’t enough. There was desperation in the way his mouth devoured her, recklessness in his exploring hands, fostered by a need greater than anything he’d ever known before.

But then…he’d never been hungry for so long, and this was a need only a starving man could know.

She tore her mouth from his at last and clung to him, sobbing…gasping for breath. Holding her, he returned to his senses slowly…first to discover they were both shaking, then that his hand was molded to the shape of her breast and his work-roughened skin separated from the delicate silkiness of hers only by the thinnest layer of lace. Not surprisingly, the sweater she was wearing had been no barrier to him at all.

“I’m sorry.” She gulped the words in a tear-thickened voice, not pulling away from him but lowering her face so his lips, already burning with thirst for her, could only find solace in the smooth moist skin of her forehead.

Breath gusted from his chest and stirred her hair. “Mary…”

She gave her head a quick, hard shake…pressed her hand against him, trembling-pushing him away or imploring him to stay? He could feel the battle raging inside her as she said with a heart-rending travesty of a laugh, “That wasn’t-I know there must be rules against you…against us doing this.”

“Probably,” he said, laughing with her, in too much turmoil himself to realize how much she wanted him to deny it. “I don’t think the situation’s come up before.”

He caught only a glimpse of her ravaged face before she turned away from him. One glimpse of pride and despair, hope and grief… And it hit him then, like a nightmare he hadn’t had in so long he’d forgotten how terrible it could be-a sense of loss like a huge dark hole opening up in front of him where his future ought to be.

I can’t lose this woman. Even if it means my job, my career. I’m not going to let her go.

Before the thought had completely formed in his mind his hand lashed out, caught her by the arm and spun her back to him. She came against his chest with a force that drove a gasp from her lungs, and his mouth was there to take it from her. She made a sound-a cry, a whimper, a sob-and he took that, too. Took it, and gave her back everything that was inside him he hadn’t been able to find words to say.

At first, he cradled her head between his two hands, afraid if he let go he might lose her again. Holding her like that, he kissed her mouth, her throat, the wound on her cheek, her eyelids…and when his lips tasted moisture there, felt a stinging in his own throat and the backs of his eyes. Only when he felt her hands tugging at his shirt did he scoop his hands underneath her sweater to reclaim the sweet, aching pleasure of skin on skin. His hands on her skin…her hands on his…oh yes, it was pleasure, and a fierce wild joy he’d sorely missed.

But it was also a strange kind of relief he felt-relief in knowing at last and beyond any doubt that he and this woman were both of like mind and had crossed an invisible line together…two people on a toboggan that had been balanced on the lip of a mountain but had now tipped irrevocably and begun its dangerous, exhilarating journey. For better or worse, there was no getting off now. No turning back.

Treated to the sensory wonder of his hands on her nakedness, he couldn’t get enough, couldn’t get her clothes out of the way fast enough. The fact that she seemed caught on the same snag didn’t help matters; the soft whimpering sounds she made, the cool slide of her hands over his fevered skin were like throwing gasoline on a conflagration. Or maybe it was just her, this woman who’d been called mousy, this redhead who wasn’t…this proud woman with a panther’s walk and fire-and-rain eyes and a mouth that had almost but not quite forgotten how to smile. Without doing a thing, she was more than enough to set a man on fire.

He pulled back from her a little, needing a respite from the sledgehammer pounding of his heart, and she took advantage of the space that opened between them to pull her sweater over her head and drop it to the floor. She stood there and looked at him then, eyes hot and vulnerable at the same time, and instead of quieting down, his heart leaped into his throat. Her breasts, rising and falling with her quick, shallow breaths, were just barely covered by the thinnest and most delicate lace.

Desire shuddered through him. He cupped her breasts in his palms as if they were gifts he’d been given…stroked the beaded tips through the transparent fabric and murmured, “Wow… Miss Mary, it appears you have unplumbed depths.”

A breathy giggle somehow broke loose from her ragged respirations. “Feel free to plumb them-” her voice caught, and she finished in a choking whisper “-if you want.”

“Oh, I want.” He hooked his thumbs in the straps of her bra and drew them slowly over her shoulders. “I definitely want.” Dazed…humbled by the beauty of what he’d uncovered…what she’d offered, he lifted his eyes to hers and said in a thickened voice, “That’s…if you want, too.”

It was another thing he’d forgotten-the vulnerability. Intimacy never had come easy for him. He and Erin had been kids together, played naked in the sprinkler together. Skinny-dipped together. Yet he remembered the first time they’d made love-virgins, both of them-how scared he’d been, not just the usual kind of performance anxiety most of the guys he knew wouldn’t ever admit to having, not in a million years, and probably did a whole lot of bragging to cover up. No…the kind of fear he’d felt had been more in the nature of awe, an overwhelming sense of wonder at the magnitude of this step he was taking…that they were taking. He and Erin. That this woman would open up the most private and personal, intimate part of herself…to him. That he would allow her to see him without any of his defenses…utterly naked in every sense of the word.

After Erin, he’d thought he’d never go through that with another woman, ever again. And yet…here he was.

“I want,” she whispered.

He released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding…closed his eyes and lowered his head…pressed his mouth to her throat…her breasts… moistening her skin and the lace alike with his essence. Inhaled deeply…he’d forgotten how good a woman’s skin smelled. Tasted. Felt.

The desire to bury himself in her warm body and lose himself there was so intense he felt dizzy with it…hollow, as if he hadn’t eaten in days. His stomach growled, and it made him think again of Erin, other times, before they’d made love, when they’d been necking and his stomach would growl, and she’d tease him about being hungry. Oh, yeah…but not that kind of hungry.

That memory led to another-the reason for those frustrating make-out sessions when he’d been so hard and hot and young enough to think he’d surely die from it: he’d been too afraid to buy condoms, because he figured if Boyd found out-and he was sure to find out, in a town where everybody knew everybody’s business and the only drug store was owned by Boyd’s late wife’s cousin-he’d kill him.

Then one day when they were cleaning out the stables together, Boyd had handed him a packet of condoms. Roan could still hear the rancher’s crusty voice, could still recall, word for word, what he’d said: “You care about a gal, you take care of her. You hear me, son? You take care of my girl.”

Take care of her… Well, he’d done his best. To the best of his knowledge, his father-in-law hadn’t ever held it against him that his best hadn’t been good enough.

“Mary…” He pulled away from her with a groan of regret he felt deep in his belly…his groin…all the way to his toes. “We can’t do this. Not now. I don’t have anything. I’m sorry…”

“There’s a package of condoms in the medicine cabinet,” she said in a strangled voice. And quickly added when his startled stare jerked to hers, “Not mine-they came with the house. I guess Queenie forgot them.” There was a different kind of light in her eyes, one he’d never seen there before. “Either that, or…”

“A housewarming gift?” He managed to say it with a straight face, though he’d already realized the light in her eyes must be laughter. It seemed so improbable, so rare, that glint of wicked humor, his impulse was to shelter and nourish it with secret delight, like an orchid found blooming in a dark wood.

“Talk about unplumbed depths,” Mary murmured solemnly.

And suddenly they were holding each other again, clinging hard, her face buried in the curve of his neck, his in her hair, both of them shaking with smothered laughter, giddy relief and maybe fear.

“Do you want to go get them,” he whispered finally, “or shall I?”

“You go. Just don’t…” She tipped her head back and her eyes, fathomless and green as oceans, searched his. “Don’t be too long.” Again her voice was unsteady, and he knew what she’d left unsaid.

Don’t take too long…don’t think too much…don’t lose this.

“Count on it,” he growled. He kissed her long and deeply, then left her.

It’s because of moments like this, Mary thought as she waited for Roan to return, lovers consider darkness a friend.

Darkness would have spared her the agony of wondering how to wait for him…whether to undress or not…whether to wait for him in bed or not. How humiliating it would be if she did those things, and he changed his mind. Came to his senses.

Nothing like putting on a condom, she thought, fingers lingering uncertainly on the zipper of her slacks, to shine the cold light of reality on an insanity like this.

But, looking at it from the other side, how would it be if he came back dressed and ready, so to speak, to find her dressed and not? How embarrassing would that be for him?

Resolute now, and before she could change her mind again, she kicked off her shoes, pulled down the zipper and stepped out of her slacks. One issue decided.

She was still debating the second, standing beside her bed wearing nothing but a scrap of lace and trying to keep herself from shaking like a leaf, when Roan came into the room. She half turned, eyes filled with all the questions she couldn’t ask. And one look at him told her all she needed to know-that he hadn’t changed his mind, that what she was wearing, or he was wearing, or where she waited, in daylight or darkness…none of it mattered at all.

He’d taken off his boots and uniform belt and shirt, but not his pants. His hard, muscular body, pale as a marble sculpture except for the dark V of tan at his throat and a dusting of mink-brown hair, seemed to shimmer in the mist that came suddenly to cloud her eyes. Even so, she couldn’t mistake the glitter of desire in his…or the naked vulnerability.

Her heart gave a leap she feared would send it through the wall of her chest. She had time for one glad cry and then his arms were strong around her, and his body hard against her softness, scorching wherever it touched her. His mouth opened with hers, both of them ravishing…hungry. His heartbeat thumped against her breasts. One big hand scraped down her naked back and skimmed roughly over her hip, taking the scrap of lace with it…then turned gentle as it slipped between her legs. Warm fingers cupped her, found their way between folds already moist and ready for him…stroked, tested…then pushed inside. The sensation tore through her…jolted her…stunned her. He captured her gasp in his mouth.

It had been too long, the sensation was too raw. The penetration brought her almost instantly to shuddering, knee-buckling climax.

She was sobbing when he laid her down…trembling when he coaxed her legs apart, opened her to him and held her there with gentle hands and insistent thumbs…whimpering when he licked into her and stroked her once again to the brink of madness. And when he slid inside her at last, hard and hot and full, she sobbed again as she cried out his name.