Of the many abuses her undernourished body had endured in the past, losing fistfuls of brittle hair was the most lingering and shameful.
She never wore it loose in public. Not then. Not even now, years after her recovery.
Jed’s eyes finally decided it was safe to find hers, though he seemed as speechless as she was.
‘Good morning, Sheriff.’ She forced air through her lips, but it didn’t come out half as poised as she might have hoped. The wobble gave her away.
‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he muttered. Four tiny lines splayed out between his dark eyebrows and he glanced down to the box at his feet. ‘I brought supplies.’
She dropped her gaze and finally absorbed the box’s contents. Milk, fruit, bread, eggs, half a ham leg. Her whole body shrivelled—the habit of years. It was more than just supplies, it was a Thanksgiving feast. To a Texan that was probably a starter pack, but what he’d brought would last her weeks.
‘Thank you.’ She dug deep into her chatting-with-strangers repertoire for some lightness to cover the moment. ‘Cattle mustering, fire lighting and now deliveries. County sheriffs sure have a broad job description.’
His lips tightened. ‘Sure do. In between the road deaths and burglaries and domestic violence.’
She winced internally. Why did every word out of her mouth end up belittling him?
But he moved the conversation smoothly on. ‘You were heading out?’
‘No, I just wanted to see the sky.’ That put a complex little question mark in his expression. ‘To check the weather,’ she added.
‘You know we get the Weather Channel in Texas, right?’
Of course she knew that. But she’d been trusting her own instincts regarding the weather for years. On the whole she was right more often than the experts. ‘Right, but I’d rather see it for myself.’
Wow, did she sound as much of a control freak as she feared?
His stare intensified. ‘As it happens, meteorology is also on my job description. Today will be fine and eighty-two degrees.’
Ellie couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting upwards to the streak of cloud front visible between the overhanging eaves of the two buildings.
He didn’t look surprised. If anything, he looked disappointed. ‘You really don’t trust anyone but yourself, huh?’
She lifted her chin and met his criticism. ‘It smells like rain.’
He snorted. ‘I don’t think so, Manhattan. We’ve been in drought for months.’
He might as well have patted her on the head. He bent and retrieved the box, then looked expectantly towards her little kitchenette. No way on earth she was letting him back in here until she was fully and properly dressed and every hair was in its rightful place. She took a deep breath, stepped out from behind the door and extended her arms for the box.
‘It’s heavy…’ he warned.
‘Try me,’ she countered.
Another man might have argued. The sheriff just plonked the box unceremoniously into her arms. It was hard to know if that reflected his confidence in her ability or some twisted desire to see her fail.
She fixed her expression, shifted her feet just slightly and let her spine take the full brunt of the heavy supplies. It didn’t fail her. You don’t dance for twelve years without building up a pretty decent core strength. Just for good measure she didn’t rush the box straight over to the counter and, since it was doing a pretty good job of preserving her modesty, she had no real urgency. ‘Okay, well… Thanks again.’
B’bye now.
He didn’t look fooled. Or chagrined. If anything, he looked amused. Like he knew exactly what she was doing. The corners of that gorgeous mouth kicked up just slightly. He flicked his index finger at the brim of his sheriff’s hat in farewell and turned to walk away.
She could have closed the door and heaved the box over to the kitchen. She probably should have done that. But instead she made herself take its weight a little longer, and she watched him saunter up the pathway towards his SUV, law-enforcement accoutrements hanging off both sides of his hips, lending a sexy kind of emphasis to the loping motion of his strong legs.
Then, just as he hit the sidewalk—just as she convinced herself he wasn’t going to—he turned and glanced back down the lane and smiled like he knew all along that she was still watching. Though it nearly killed her arms to do it, she even managed to return his brief salute by lifting three fingers off her death grip on the heavy box in a faux-casual farewell flick.
Then she kicked the door shut between them and hurried to the counter before she had fruit and ham and eggs splattered all over her chilly barn floor.
Jed slid in beside Deputy and waited until the tinted window of his driver’s door was one hundred per cent closed before he let himself release his breath on a long, slow hiss.
Okay…
So…
His little self-pep talk last night amounted to exactly nothing this morning. One look at Little Miss Rumpled Independence and he was right back to wanting to muscle his way into that barn and never leave. No matter how contrary she was. In fact, maybe because she was so contrary.
And, boy, was she ever. She would have hefted all one hundred and twenty pounds of Deputy and held him in her slender arms if he suggested she couldn’t.
But she had done it. Thank goodness, too, because a man could only stare at the wall so long to avoid staring somewhere infinitely less appropriate. It wasn’t her fault he’d had a flash of conscience while jogging at 6:00 a.m. about how empty the refrigerator in his barn conversion was. Her mortification at being caught unprepared for company was totally genuine.
So she might be snappish and belligerent, but she wasn’t some kind of exhibitionist.
Which meant she was only two parts like Maggie, he thought as he pulled the SUV out into the quiet street. Maggie and her sexual confidence had him twisted up in so many knots he could barely see straight by the time she’d worn him down. It was never his plan to date someone in his own department but it was certainly her plan and Maggie was nothing if not determined.
But he was practically a different man back then. A boy. He’d taken that legacy scholarship straight out of school and gone to the Big Smoke to reinvent himself and he’d done a bang-up job.
He just wished he could have become a man that he liked a little bit more.
Still…done was done. He walked away from the NYPD after fifteen years with a bunch of salvaged scruples, a firm set of rules about relationships and a front seat full of canine squad flunky.
Not a bad starting point for his third try at life.
One block ahead he saw Danny McGovern’s battered pickup shoot a red intersection and he reached automatically for the switch for his roof lights. Pulling traffic was just a tiny bit too close to Ellie Patterson’s jibe about the kinds of low-end tasks she’d seen him run as sheriff but, if he didn’t do it, then that damned kid was going to run every light between Larkville and Austin and, eventually, get himself killed.
And since one of those fine scruples he’d blown his other life to pieces over involved protection of hotshot dumb-asses like McGovern, he figured he owed it to himself to at least try. He’d been negligent