The anger left him almost as quickly as it had come. He pressed a hand to his chest and expelled a weary sigh. Her time would come. The one who got away—the one who could spoil it all—her time was coming. Sooner than she’d ever expect.
He smiled, feeling rational and benevolent and in control once more.
“Goodbye, love.”
He leaned over the bed and kissed her gently on her cool cheek. Then he disappeared into the night.
“SHERIFF HANCOCK, this is a surprise.” Jessica peeled off her gloves and dropped them onto the worktable beside the rusted toy wagon she’d been cleaning.
“Mornin’, Jessie.” Curtis Hancock slipped his broad-brimmed hat over his salt-and-pepper hair before climbing out of the white official county cruiser. “Fine September day, isn’t it?”
Jessica didn’t answer. She rarely judged her days by the quality of the weather anymore.
She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and whistled for Harry who was sunning himself at the far end of the porch. “Harry, come.” Shaking off his snooze, the big dog stretched and trotted over as soon as she gave him a stern look. She rewarded his instant obedience with a “Good boy” and a vigorous scratching along his chest and muzzle. “Harry, heel.”
Together, they walked down to the gravel parking lot while the sheriff adjusted his holster and utility belt around the waistband of his dark-brown uniform. Short and on the stocky side, thanks to his wife’s Southern-style cooking, Curtis Hancock was every inch the proper, old-fashioned gentleman. Maybe that, and the fact he was closer to her father’s age than her own, made her relax enough to smile. “Can I help you with something?”
The sheriff tipped his hat in a polite greeting. “Just making some rounds. I like to check on my favorite people in the county when I can.” He leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper. “I let my deputies check on the ones I don’t like.”
He straightened with a wink and Jessica laughed on cue. “I’m flattered.” She thumbed over her shoulder toward the cabin. “I still have some coffee in the pot. Would you like a cup?”
“No, thanks.” He rested both hands near the buckle of his belt, assuming a casual stance. But his dark, darting eyes surveyed her place with a thorough curiosity. “I’m having lunch with Trudy Kent in half an hour. We’re going over security for that big soirée she’s throwing tomorrow night.”
“Security? For a dinner party?” Gertrude Wallace Kensington Kent was one of Missouri’s wealthiest widows and liked to do things in a big way. But as the older woman’s neighbor, she’d also learned that Trudy did them with grace and style. “That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Half the county’s invited. It’ll be more like a political rally, I imagine. She and her son, Charles, are determined that the city not buy up any more property to build a highway or new industrial complex. The Kents have lived in this part of the county since before the Civil War. They intend to keep a pristine countryside.”
She nodded. Trudy Kent had a standing offer to buy Jessica’s adjoining property if she ever decided to sell. “And the business owners who are looking to expand or turn a tidy profit on land sales aren’t thrilled with Trudy’s plan. Are you really expecting trouble?”
“I just like to be prepared so I can control the situation should anything come up.” His gaze lit and narrowed at a distant point beyond Jessica’s shoulder. “Are you going to the party?”
His question was perfunctory and polite, but she could tell he was more interested in what he was watching than in her answer. She slowly turned to look over her shoulder, already guessing what had caught his eye.
Sam O’Rourke.
“I hired him yesterday.” She answered his unspoken question first. “There’s a lot I need to get done. Derek Phillips is busy after school with sports and farm responsibilities so he can’t put in the hours he did over the summer.”
Sheriff Hancock nodded. “Looks like a good worker.”
The big man with the shaggy black hair and granite eyes was pushing a gravel-filled wheelbarrow from the barn to her driveway. Perspiration from honest work glistened on his golden skin, making dark patches on his black T-shirt at the center of his chest and the small of his back. His biceps and triceps corded with the effort as he negotiated the heavy load across the bumpy terrain. Though she knew he’d shaved this morning, the navy bandanna tied around his forehead gave him a dangerous, street-tough look.
It was all unnerving somehow, having Sam O’Rourke around the place. “He’s doing fine so far.” She tried to focus on conversing with the sheriff. “At the rate he’s going, he’ll have the driveway, the parking lot and the road up into the woods regravelled by the end of the week.”
Though Sam hadn’t spoken to her beyond proposing a list of tasks, asking about tools and thanking her for breakfast, she hadn’t once forgotten he was there. She made a point of knowing where he was at all times.
But her vigilance wasn’t solely due to commonsense safety and a lingering distrust of the man. With her eye for detail, she couldn’t help noticing how his faded jeans hugged his lean hips and the solid trunks of his thighs. Sam O’Rourke was big. She was five-eight, and he towered over her by a good eight inches. He was in shape. His stomach was flat and his arms were corded like a man who worked out. And he was sexy. Not handsome. Not by any conventional definition of the word. Everything about his features was too strong, too angular—all set in stone without a smile or laugh line to soften them.
But he was undeniably compelling. A testament to honed strength and raw masculinity.
Jessica watched him fill three holes until he glanced her way and caught her staring. She quickly looked down, busying her attention with scratching Harry beneath his ears and praying the edginess that suddenly suffused her body didn’t show.
But she doubted Sheriff Hancock was seeing the same details about Sam that she was. Her cheeks heated at the realization. She hadn’t noticed a man’s looks in months. Only to size up whether or not he was a threat to her, and to try to decide if he was the one. She couldn’t remember the last time her body had buzzed with this long-forgotten awareness of a man.
Not since Alex. And her attraction for him had dimmed the moment he’d introduced his wife at that museum fund-raiser. That had been during that same fateful trip to Chicago. Her sexual appetite had soured that night in the face of his arrogant deceit. Later, it had been destroyed by something much, much worse.
But she was noticing Sam O’Rourke.
And it scared her. Scared her enough to tighten her fingers around the cold steel of Harry’s collar to steady herself. What was she thinking? Her therapist said when she started to heal, she’d begin to think of men in a sexual way again. That that was normal, and not to be afraid of the feelings.
But when she thought of how much she’d been hurt, how humiliated she’d been, how degraded and stupid she’d felt at letting a man…
No. You didn’t let him do anything, she chided herself. He attacked you. He used you. The scars on her fingers and neck, her wrists and ankles reminded her of how valiantly she’d fought. The fact she’d been naked and battered beneath a threadbare blanket when she’d hailed that cab proved she’d been in fear for her life.
One man had done something unspeakable to her. One man.
Not the entire male population.
She loved her brothers and father. She could conduct business with men, carry on a conversation with them. She could look at—and even admire—them. That was all normal.
But she’d be a suicidal idiot if she allowed herself to get close to another man. If she allowed herself