She was the blue sky in his life, and his greatest fear was that one day, without quite knowing how, he’d mess up, that the needs of others would take him from Taryn one time too many, that he would lose her and his life all over again.
“Sheriff One.” RoAnn’s voice squawked over the radio. “Chance, are you there?”
As good as RoAnn was at coordinating calls, he could never get her to use the proper radio lingo. Chance keyed the mike. “Sheriff One. Go ahead.”
“Sam Wentworth just buzzed me. He’s out by Gator Park and thinks he’s found the safe that was heisted from Leggett’s Antiques yesterday.”
“Tad can check it out when he’s done with Ruby.”
“You really ought to yank her license. Ruby’s a menace on the road. But does anyone ever listen to me? No. Look, Gator Park’s on your way to the Brett ranch, Chance, and Tad’s way out on the other side of town. Won’t take but a minute of your time. Oh, and since you’ll be going that way, might as well stop by Nancy Howell’s on your way home and pick up that blackberry jam she’s got for Taryn.”
Taryn would want the jam to sell at her little Bread and Butter bakery. Might as well give her another reason to smile at him when he finally made his way home again. “All right. Show me en route to Gator Park.”
“Don’t forget the jam.”
“I won’t.”
Gator Park, the Brett ranch, the Howell farm—then home. He couldn’t wait to watch Taryn’s face light up at the sight of him, to run his fingers through her soft brown hair, to get his arms around her once more.
Heading north, beyond the Gabenburg town-limit sign, land rolled into gentle hills and patches of pine forests. To the south, the terrain leveled out into grassy marshlands and drifted into the Gulf of Mexico. Ahead in a field, cattle and egrets clustered around a water tank. Here and there an oil derrick pumped. A flock of geese passed over low and honked as they crossed the highway.
The cruiser’s air-conditioning was on the fritz again, so Chance drove with the windows rolled down. The air was sticky and heavy with the odor of pine, cow dung and flood-swollen river. He took it all in and smiled. These sights and smells and sounds were all precious to him. Fifteen years ago, he’d been given a second chance at life and he wasn’t going to waste a moment of it regretting a past he couldn’t remember.
For a while he’d wondered at the blankness of his memory, at his missing childhood. Then, ten years ago when he’d joined the sheriff’s office, he’d run a set of his prints through the system. Nothing had matched. He’d felt a measure of comfort in that.
Chance signaled his exit off the highway. The Red Thunder River ran fast and hard in the spring, calmed enough to harvest tourist dollars in the summer, and turned uninviting again in the fall. Sam Wentworth claimed he was born on the river and spent most of his time on the water. If the suspects had dumped the safe in the river, it didn’t surprise Chance in the least that Sam would be the one to uncover the fact.
As Chance crested the hill off the ramp, the river appeared. The recent rains had swollen it to the top of its banks and it roared like an awakening giant, churning silt as it rushed to the Gulf. The sun glittered off the racing water, bleeding it red like an open vein. He was halfway down the hill, letting gravity pull the cruiser down, when a flash zapped through his brain.
A picture bolted through his mind. Clear, vivid, horrid.
The sounds, the smells, the sights assaulted him in one overwhelming blow, ripping him from this world and pitching him into another.
Inside this strange realm, everything is tinged red.
Panic surges through him. He’s fighting with everything he has, but something bigger, stronger has hold of him and is intent on destroying him.
The smell of death hangs heavy in the sticky air. The taste of muddy water fills his mouth, makes him gag and sputter. The river surrounds him. He’s tugged and tossed and tumbled like debris. He tries to swim, but the current is too strong. “Hang on!” His voice? Someone else’s? Something catches his foot, drags him under. Black, nothing but black. Hands grab at him. His head is above water once more.
Breath, where is his breath? He’s not moving, hanging on to something hard and slippery. A branch. Something bumps into him. He turns. He screams.
A body floats on the water. Bump, bump, bump against his side. Long blond hair writhes on the waves. From a gash on the side of her head pours blood.
Then hands again, tugging, yanking. Pulling? Pushing? Dizzy. Nothing makes sense.
He looks up. Through the water’s silver-red surface, he sees his own shimmering face.
Terror engulfs him. He fights with all his might, but the hands only get stronger around his neck. Blond hair flails around him.
He’s dying.
He’s dead.
THE CHILI WAS HOT. The beer was cold. The green beans were fresh from Ruby Kramer’s garden. Taryn had traded for them that afternoon with a loaf of sourdough bread. A cherry pie waited on the counter—a sweet ending to a meal meant to win a man’s heart.
All that was missing was Chance.
Taryn flopped into a kitchen chair and straightened a linen napkin. She’d planned everything to the last second.
Then Chance had come home and knocked her best intentions haywire. She couldn’t resist him; never had been able to.
The attraction wasn’t just that his distinctive cheekbones made him look at once savage and sexy. It wasn’t just that his bottomless dark eyes seemed to take her in and hold her safe. It was also because the bone-deep goodness in him made her believe in the possibility of enduring happiness.
She hated herself for making Chance feel bad about doing his job. His loyalty and his genuine care were two qualities she admired in him.
She’d wanted everything to be perfect, everything to feel right. Determined, she stood up. “It still can be.”
The evening was young. Chance could handle Billy Ray Brett in no time. He’d done it often enough. She hurried toward the bathroom and started the shower. This was going to be a special night. One she hoped Chance would never forget. She wasn’t going to ruin it with a fit of resentment.
She would feed him. She would seduce him. Then she would tell him their world was about to be turned upside down. As steam started to fill the small room, she stood before the mirror and cleared her throat.
“Chance, I have something to tell you,” she said out loud, testing the words she’d practiced all day in her head as she’d mixed and kneaded and baked. Why was her heart beating so fast? Why did her tongue feel so stiff and clumsy? Why did her eyes look so wild with apprehension? She swallowed hard and tried again. “Chance, remember when you said—” She growled at her disappearing image in the mirror. “Chance, I’m…we’re…”
A gulp of fear brought one hand to her belly, the other to her throat. What if…? No, she wasn’t going to worry. Chance would be pleased. Hadn’t he said so a dozen times already?
She undressed and stepped into the shower. There she lathered in a shower gel of Chance’s favorite summer-rain scent and lingered for a long time under the hot spray of water until the fear and resentment flowed down the drain along with the soapy water. After drying herself, she slathered on a body lotion of the same summer-rain scent. Hair wound in a turban of towel, she headed for the bedroom.
Out of the closet, she took the tiny red dress she’d been hiding for a week—until the time was right. She planned to meet her husband at the door wearing nothing but that scrap of cloth. It left little to the imagination. And this time, she would make him wait before she allowed him to render her mindless in his arms.
A small smile of satisfaction curled her lips as she imagined Chance’s appreciation