Even with all that on his plate, Rylie’s face appeared in his mind. Noah all but groaned in frustration.
It’s because you touched her.
The contact had been clinical, inevitable due to the need to keep the dog still. There was no reason for him to read something sensual into the experience, but tell that to his body. It had responded as though he’d walked face-first into a furnace, and he’d remained thrown off balance long into the night, until he’d indulged in a second shower for relief. Thank goodness his mother’s car was back in good shape, and Ramon would take over these clinic trips again. Clearly, he needed to protect himself from his own imagination.
After starting the coffee machine, Noah went to his desk with his collection of newspapers that were stacked daily on the hallway bench outside the office door. But as he sat down, the computer’s dark monitor screen was what captured and kept his attention. It stared back at him in bold daring, a portal to...what?
Your best opportunity to find answers. Go ahead. You know you want to.
He checked his watch. The empty office would stay quiet like this for another half hour at most. Temptation won.
Noah booted up the machine. Just one more search, he told himself. He didn’t want to dream about her again tonight. Yes, she was cute, yes, she was a new experience to him, but was it sane to become obsessed with a woman who lived in an RV!
As soon as that censorious thought formed in his mind, he felt shame, only to get defensive. Experience had taught him that few people had the Teflon skins attributed to some Washington, D.C., politicians that they could survive scandal or the weight of relentless gossip. If he was going to run for office, the shortest distance to that goal was to choose your society with circumspection. He needed some information, any excuse to get Rylie Quinn out of his head.
Try the social networks.
Although he grimaced at the thought of venturing there, Noah knew as friendly as Rylie was, she probably lived every free moment on Facebook and Twitter. It didn’t take but seconds before he logged in to his own account—a tedious requirement for him per office policy to make the public feel connected—and typed her name in the search box. Her page came up within seconds.
There was no ignoring the jump in his pulse as he clicked through her photo album, seeing that at her high-school graduation, she’d had waist-length hair. His next thought was that she had a ton of friends, including guys still carrying a crush, and a very proud family, he thought after seeing her parents gaze at her in each photo with love and adoration. Noah would never do the profiles or answer the idiotic questions they asked, but Rylie didn’t seem to have a problem with them. Some, anyway. Actually, she had a contagious sense of humor, he thought, as he caught himself smiling, and then chuckling a few times. At other times, he was left transfixed.
She’d thought about joining Cirque du Soleil before heading for college to become a veterinarian. Being an athlete and cheerleader in high school explained why. In college, she’d continued with the cheerleading and had been the highflier. Noah suspected that’s also what came with being the smallest in the group. Having witnessed her questionable balance, though, he wondered if she’d spent more time on crutches and in slings than on the practice floor.
She loved potatoes and gravy, wildflowers, pears in rum sauce, and confessed to craving steak too much to become a vegetarian. Nevertheless, she vowed she would jump at any chance to be on someone’s fishing boat, and found lightning both terrifying and hypnotic.
Her dislikes were questions about dislikes. She didn’t want to focus on the negative; every day was a new opportunity to her.
Just as you thought, the original optimist—or an eternal kid.
Then why were there secrets in her eyes?
“Good morning!”
Judy Millsap entered, bringing with her the scent of lavender and doughnuts. Since many sheriff’s deputies, bailiffs and clerks passed their open door numerous times a day, Judy liked to bring a box of doughnuts to place by the coffee machine on the counter. Goodwill to all who passed. In her own way, Judy was the older rendition of Rylie—without the impishness—the ambassador of their office. At least Judy was a realist and mostly did it because—as she put it—“You get more flies with honey than vinegar.”
“Morning,” he called back to her. If his heart wasn’t entirely in the greeting, it was because he knew he would now have to get focused on his day job. “Everything okay on your end?”
“It will be after another big mug of caffeine. I was up half the night ridiculously transfixed on listening to coyotes. Say something nice to me before I take off these sunglasses and offend you with the feed bags under my bloodshot eyes.”
“You run the best office in East Texas,” Noah replied, truthfully.
After a moment’s hesitation, Judy slid off the glasses and gave him a pained look. “For an attractive and intelligent man, you are truly clueless, Noah Prescott.”
Startled, Noah sat back in his chair. “What?”
“You don’t have a clue, do you?”
“I just complimented you.”
With the smile of a patient mother, Judy replied, “You complimented what I do. That’s not who I am.”
He groaned inwardly. Women. Surely, Judy didn’t believe the two were separate. Not at this juncture of her life. She had been with the office for over twenty years, and there had been few eight-hour days, even in a small department like theirs.
“Have you been watching old Errol Flynn movies or that Don Juan something or other with Brando and Depp?” he asked, suspicious.
“Don Juan Demarco—as a matter of fact, I did. Last night because that horrible howling does bad things to my imagination. And even though I watched in the living room, would you believe Dwayne said the flickering lights coming down the hall and the audio—though set low—ruined his sleep, too?” From a singsong voice, she went almost feral. “Why couldn’t he just say that he missed having me beside him? You men never say what you mean.”
He thought he had. Noah suggested with more care, “You could always move. Away from the coyote problem, I mean.”
Judy rolled her eyes in disbelief. “You of all people have no business saying anything like that, Noah Prescott. Could you leave Haven Land?”
His first impulse was to remind her that he had done so. Before the accident that left him with responsibility too great to delegate to others. But Judy had lived in Cherokee County her entire life, and had never wanted to go anywhere else. She’d earned her business degree through a combination of the community college, online and via UT Tyler. Nothing wrong with that if it was what you wanted. He, on the other hand, hadn’t felt as though Haven Land soil was somehow intrinsic to his heart and liver function. Fate, though, seemed to be insisting otherwise.
Instead, he said, “I’ll catch the phones while you have your coffee.” With regret, he shut down the Facebook page. He would have gone on to the next idea/source, since he’d learned Rylie was from some small town around Palm Springs, California. Palm Springs gave him the hunch that there was a good reason why she could afford that RV. No wonder she hadn’t been star-blinded by his family name, or his mother’s friends. She had to be used to wealthy clients. That raised the question, what else was she used to?
* * *
“I’m used to a lot, and I’m game to try more.”
Rylie had been armpit-deep into a pregnant cow’s womb often enough not to hesitate trying to help Gage with a pygmy goat having a difficult labor due to tangled kids inside her. It was six hours after closing. She’d been in bed, asleep, for an