Tate blanched at the plain speaking. Feelings? Heck, yes, he still had feelings for her. Trouble was, his feelings were all mixed up—fear, mistrust and a longing so fierce he’d been tormented all last night with dreams of Julee. He’d awakened in such a sweat he’d gotten up at 3:00 a.m. to take a shower. A cold one.
“As far as I’m concerned I’ll be glad to see her gone.”
“Question is, why?” Bert pointed a checker at him. “Shelly always said you never got over Julee.”
How could he explain that avoiding Julee was a matter of self-preservation? Learning to live without her ten years ago had nearly killed him, an experience he couldn’t afford to repeat.
“I wasn’t the right man for Shelly,” he said, skirting the issue of Julee. “You know it and so does she.” His brief and disastrous marriage to Bert’s daughter had been the final chapter in his book of love. Never again.
“A man can’t work 24-7 and keep a woman happy, that’s for sure.”
“Running a sheriff’s office is a full-time job. If anyone understands that, it’s you.”
“Being a good sheriff’s one thing, but I don’t recall ever sleeping in my office. You let this town run you ragged.”
“I owe them, Bert. Just like I owe you.”
The old sheriff had seen something worth saving in the rebellious youth, though for the life of him Tate couldn’t imagine what it had been.
“You don’t owe me a blamed thing. This county needed a good sheriff and we were danged lucky to get you.”
“Still, I wish things could have been different for Shelly’s sake.”
“I know that, boy. That’s why I got no hard feelings.” Bert smiled and reached for another peppermint. “That and the fact that Shelly found a nine-to-five fellow and had me some grandbabies.”
“She deserved a better man than me.”
He’d married Shelly out of gratitude, like a groveling dog happy to have a pat on the head. She’d made him feel like a man again during those dark days when he’d cared more about killing himself with liquor and fighting than living, so he’d repaid her kindness by messing up her life. And the remorse he felt for disappointing his mentor, the only man who’d ever believed in him, would never go away.
He shook his head to clear the memory. As a rabble-rousing teenager he’d been called worthless trailer trash. Now he hid behind a clean uniform and a sheriff’s badge, but deep down he figured the cruel taunt was still true.
Pushing back from the table, he looked at his wristwatch. “Time to get back to work before the good citizens of Blackwood change their minds about me.”
“Don’t want to talk about Julee, huh?” Bert looked at him with a half smile.
“Nothing to talk about.” He reached down to rub his knee. Thinking about Julee stirred up all his old aches and pains, some of them higher up than his knee. “She zoomed in here like a mosquito. Once she’s zapped everyone’s blood, she’ll zoom right back out. The sooner, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
As he started to rise, the hospital administrator tapped in on low-heeled pumps to tack a huge poster on the bulletin board. Tate lifted a hand in greeting, then let it fall to the table, sinking back into his chair. A photo of Julee and her famous legs stared out at him below a caption announcing the bone-marrow drive. And if that wasn’t enough to make him swallow the peppermint whole, the celebrity herself swept into the center, long, glorious legs drawing the stares of everyone in the place.
Julianna’s heart took one giant leap from her chest to her throat. Tate, looking too handsome to be real, scowled at her from across a checkerboard. For the hundredth time since the meeting at his office, she asked herself why he disliked her so much. He’d been the one to betray her and find someone else in a painfully short amount of time. She’d known then that his love had not run as deep as he’d claimed.
Julee remembered the morning she’d left Blackwood like yesterday. Tate, wearing his high-school letter jacket, long black hair slicked into a ponytail, leaned his backside against a beat-up old Ford pickup, pulled her between the V of his legs and held her until the bus arrived.
She couldn’t recall much of anything they’d said, just the feel of his rock-hard arms holding her close, the wool and leather scent of his jacket, and the warmth of his breath on her hair. The heavy ache of parting hung in the air between them. When the bus arrived, air brakes ripping the quiet morning, she’d started to cry. The Oklahoma wind had whipped her long hair around her face. Tate had smoothed it back, then cradled her face in his hands and brushed away the tears.
“Promise you’ll come back,” he whispered fiercely. “Promise.”
Since the day she’d received the call from the Body Parts Agency in California, he’d agreed she had to go. He knew how badly she and her widowed mother needed the money this contract promised. No matter how much she loved Tate, this was a chance in a lifetime she had to take.
“I’ll be back. I promise.”
But the tormented look in his green eyes said he was just as scared as she was.
Heart breaking, she’d almost backed out, almost decided not to go when he pushed her up the steps.
“Go.” He shoved twenty dollars in her hand and stepped back. “They’re gonna love you out there.”
As the double doors folded inward, he pressed two fingers to his lips and laid them on the window. She’d held his eyes, frantically mouthing “I love you, I love you,” until the bus rumbled away and he was lost in the smoke and fumes. Hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, he’d stared back at her with a stark, broken expression. She’d cried all the way to L.A., fearing that last kiss was his final farewell.
It had been. Regardless of his promise to wait, he’d found someone else and married before she’d even discovered she was pregnant with his child. So much for his promises of undying love. He’d moved on with his life and eventually so had she. So, why was he staring at her now as though she was a hair in his hamburger?
Self-conscious beneath his scrutiny, she smoothed both hands down the sides of her powder-blue sheath. Though she’d intentionally dressed to appear successful and confident, she felt as gawky and insecure as she had in high school, the skinny girl who was all legs.
To make matters worse, the hospital administrator, who was nearly as excited about the bone-marrow drive as she, drew the attention of everyone in the room. “Look, Julianna,” she squealed. “There’s the man you need.”
Julee cringed. Oh, she needed him all right, though she prayed he’d never find out just how much. Reluctantly, she left the woman’s side and moved in Tate’s direction. Since the disastrous meeting in his office, she’d steered clear, hoping public pressure would convince him to donate after she couldn’t do the job. Now, time was growing short. She had to be certain he would be in town that day. If worse came to worst, she’d do the unthinkable. Against her mother’s advice and at the risk of causing trouble for Tate and his wife, she’d tell him about Megan.
Approaching the table she recognized Bert Atkins, the man who’d been sheriff in her high-school days. Since arriving in Blackwood she’d renewed a number of old acquaintances, and though she didn’t want to be here, had never planned to return, she was surprised to feel an unexpected nostalgia for her hometown.
“Hello, Mr. Atkins,” she said cordially, training her eyes on him instead of Tate. Even then, she could imagine the heat of disapproval simmering from the county sheriff. Her pulse thudded disconcertingly.
“Howdy, Miss Julee. How’s the big city?”
“Hectic. Noisy.”