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The Sheriff With The Wyoming-Size Heart
Kara Larkin
IN LOVE WITH THE SHERIFFFrom the moment little Ariel popped her head over the fence in search of her lost kitten, Margo Haynes was a goner. She'd come to Laramie, Wyoming, to start a new life…alone, but now some red-haired moppet and her imposing sheriff dad were making Margo wish for the happily-ever-after she'd given up on.Riley Corbett was a good man, with a good heart–and good-lookin' to boot. And though Margo found herself drawn to his strength and unassuming sensuality, she knew she had best keep her distance. Because a woman with her sordid past could only spell trouble for this lawman she loved….


Yes, she ached to be held in Riley Corbett’s arms again. (#ueac539cc-71fc-5ae1-a089-86c2bde3e259)Letter to Reader (#ufaf0b912-a269-5374-9274-f8f7edb06d93)Title Page (#u3e44a023-f74b-56ea-ab24-0870142a33a8)Dedication (#u835334c8-c75c-5e0a-adbe-ce86060abaf6)About the Author (#u753ba669-f6b5-5b7b-865a-9434c96c79b4)Chapter One (#u5e14a109-e5ce-597a-946e-3c357e216c05)Chapter Two (#u4fdcd9ef-376b-572a-abb2-bbd770455246)Chapter Three (#u93d4b046-267b-597d-8f71-6f86f1ab7a07)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Yes, she ached to be held in Riley Corbett’s arms again.
Yes, she wished for a family. Yes, she wished the family could be this one, with a man who had literally swept her off her feet and a little girl who tugged at her heartstrings. Yes, she’d like to believe in miracles.
But emotions aside, she’d forfeited her right to a normal life a long time ago, and she couldn’t ask a man like Riley, sworn to uphold the law, to overlook her past.
And yet, Ariel’s arrival in her life seemed like a gift, like the answer to a prayer, and she wouldn’t insult the gift by denying it. Maybe somewhere in that gift would come the strength to deal with Riley. If so, she prayed she could find it soon....
Dear Reader,
To ring in 1998—Romance-style!—we’ve got some new voices and some exciting new love stories from the authors you love.
Valerie Parv is best known for her Harlequin Romance and Presents novels, but The Billionaire’s Baby Chase, this month’s compelling FABULOUS FATHERS title, marks her commanding return to Silhouette! This billionaire daddy is pure alpha male.,.and no one—not even the heroine!—will keep him from his long-lost daughter....
Doreen Roberts’s sparkling new title, In Love with the Boss, features the classic boss/secretary theme. Discover how a no-nonsense temp catches the eye—and heart—of her wealthy brooding boss. If you want to laugh out loud, don’t miss Terry Essig’s What the Nursery Needs... In this charming story, what the heroine needs is the right man to make a baby! Hmm...
A disillusioned rancher finds himself thinking, Say You’ll Stay and Marry Me, when he falls for the beautiful wanderer who is stranded on his ranch in this emotional tale by Patti Standard. And, believe me, if you think The Bride, the Trucker and the Great Escape sounds fun, just wait till you read this engaging romantic adventure by Suzanne McMinn. And in The Sheriff with the Wyoming-Size Heart by Kathy Jacobson, emotions run high as a small-town lawman and a woman with secrets try to give romance a chance....
And there’s much more to come in 1998! hope you enjoy our selections this month—and every month.
Happy New Year!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor
Silhouette Books
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Sheriff With The Wyoming-Size Heart
Kara Larkin


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Shannon,
my daughter and my friend.
Thank you for the year we spent as roommates.
KATHY JACOBSON is a writer, teacher and adventurer, not always in that order. Currently she lives in Utah on the side of a mountain overlooking the Salt Lake Valley. She has two grown children, who no longer live with her, and an Airedale terrier, who does. In addition to romance novels, she’s written a how-to book for fiction writers.


Chapter One
After hours—or minutes—of concentration, the words slowed. Then ended. Margo Haynes didn’t know how long they’d been pouring from her mind to her fingers to the keyboard. It didn’t matter. Another scene had taken shape.
In the bright golden heat of an Indian summer, she pulled a second patio chair around to stretch her legs out on it. The afternoon breeze blew softly from the south. The giant cottonwood tree that shaded her back yard surrendered an occasional yellow leaf. A pair of squirrels chased each other tirelessly up and down an evergreen.
If she’d needed validation of a good choice, made at the right time, the new energy in her writing provided it. And the serenity of her new environment reinforced it.
Content, she tipped her face to the Wyoming sun and stretched her arms over her head to ease the stiffness from her shoulders. If she were to write a description of heaven right now, this minute, she would use today as her model. Cloudless skies, fresh air, silent streets. Privacy, anonymity, freedom.
Freedom.
After eleven long, torturous years, she had a home of her own, a new name in a town where no one knew her, enough work to keep her mind occupied and her hours filled, and an incredibly beautiful October day that invited her to work outside in shorts and a T-shirt. Paradise.
With peace shimmering inside her, she downed half a glass of iced tea and moved her portable computer from the patio table to her lap, adjusting the screen to eliminate glare.
She’d been in Laramie only two days, long enough to unpack her kitchen and her clothes, do a little shopping, and get her bearings. But the process of moving had interrupted her work for nearly a month, and the deadline for this manuscript loomed urgently. Rotating her shoulders a couple of times, she applied herself to the challenge of writing a smooth transition from the scene just ended to the scene about to begin.
When a voice called from somewhere behind her, as soft and sweet as the breeze, the sound barely registered in her mind.
“Hey,” the voice called again.
Turning, Margo saw a little gamine face peeping over the top of the six-foot fence that separated her yard from the back alley.
A girl. About five years old. And near enough to bring to the surface all the loss Margo had suppressed over the past ten years. She’d never seen Holly at this age, had missed this stage of her daughter’s life, and she hadn’t been around any children at all since giving her baby up for adoption.
Her heart suddenly in her throat, Margo ignored the similarities and concentrated on the differences. This child had brown eyes as round as quarters and thick red hair pulled back in a bushy ponytail. She had lightly freckled skin and a turned-up nose.
She’d wedged the toes of her sneakers into the diamond-shaped holes of the trellis fence, and her hands clung tightly to the top crosspiece. In an instant the girl’s precarious perch registered, and Margo raced for the gate. The latch jammed, but she hardly dared look to see what was the matter for fear the girl would fall if she glanced away.
The girl didn’t seem concerned. “My kitten got in your yard and he can’t come out.”
“Hold on,” Margo called. “I’m coming.”
“He came right through there.” A little hand let go of the fence rail, pointed at the ground, and grabbed the fence again. From the expression on the girl’s face, Margo knew the moment her fingers lost their grip. Forcing the gate open and bolting through, she caught the child just as she fell.
The toe of one shoe stayed wedged in the trellis, twisting the little girl’s leg. With her heart hammering against her ribs, Margo eased the foot free of the shoe. By a whisper of time she’d kept the child from falling, probably saved her from a broken leg. Or a broken neck. A mere second between safety and hurt. For once she’d been in the right place at the right time.
Without warning the girl’s soft weight sent an old, familiar longing coursing through Margo’s body, tightening her lungs until she could hardly breathe.
Holding the child close, she leaned against the fence to regain her equilibrium. Two little arms circled her neck, and Margo tried to hug her closer for comfort, but the girl eased back with a little giggle.
“You smell good.”
No sign of fear in the child. Not a hint of concern in her expression. Margo inhaled deeply to reclaim her own composure.
“Can I come and get my kitten?” the girl asked.
Like a second assault, another wave of longing crashed over Margo, this time breaking against the wall of detachment she’d erected over the years. She wanted to draw this child into her life and learn everything about her, fill in the spaces her imagination couldn’t satisfy about Holly. But if she did that, would it open wounds that had closed but hadn’t healed?
Trying not to be battered by her own self-doubt, Margo concentrated on why she’d moved from Texas to Wyoming. Though free at last in the eyes of the law, she also wanted freedom from recognition, to meet people who hadn’t already judged her. In Laramie she hoped to create a normal life for herself—and a normal person would help a little girl find a kitten.
“Of course.”
The girl slipped her hand into Margo’s, as tender and trusting as if they were close friends. Soft and warm and slightly gritty, it sent a host of memories careening through her head. Oh, Holly. But even as longing swelled, Margo dammed it off. The past was past, Holly hadn’t been hers for over ten years. And the new Margo Haynes did not let passion rule her. She held the gate and led the little girl into her yard. “I wonder where he went?”
In a gesture of unconcern, the girl lifted her shoulders almost to her ears, then lowered them again. “Somewhere.” She dropped onto the ground, folded her legs tailor-fashion and grinned up at Margo. “Pretty soon, he’ll come to me.”
Margo had never owned a cat, but she knew a lot about waiting. Usually it led only to more waiting. “That might take awhile, and then your mommy will be worried about you.”
“Uh-uh. She’s dead.”
Dead. Gone forever. To lose a child, to lose a parent—how much difference could there be? Margo might be able to control her emotions, but she couldn’t forget them. She sat beside the little girl, barely resisting the urge to pull her into her arms. “You must miss her a lot.”
“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can’t remember her very well.”
Margo remembered her first panic attack when she couldn’t make her baby’s face form in her mind. “Does that make you scared?”
The girl nodded and Margo found her own head dipping in concert. “Was there some special name she used to call you?”
“Merry Ariel, because Ariel’s my name. She used to sing it, like this, ‘Merry Airy, merry, merry, merry, Ariel.”’
“Oh, that’s lovely. I’ll bet you can hear her voice when you sing it.”
Ariel sang it again, then reached out and slipped her hand into Margo’s. “I almost forgot. But when sing it, I remember her.”
“Yes. And she’ll always be in your heart.” Margo savored the sweet warmth of the girl’s hand and thought of the little things that kept Holly in her heart. A handful of photos. A lock of hair. A can of baby powder she kept just for the scent.
She’d rarely regretted giving Holly to a childless couple who would love and protect her. But being sure of her decision didn’t purge the sense of loss, it just mitigated the fear for her daughter’s well-being.
And whoever loved and protected Ariel might be worried about her this very minute. “I think we’d better find your kitten, since somebody’s probably looking for you.” Margo touched her finger to the turned-up nose for emphasis.
“Uh-uh. Daddy’s at work. I came home from school by myself.”
A latch-key kid? While likely only in kindergarten? Alarm clutched Margo’s lungs. “Don’t you have someplace to go?”
“I always come home. But Mrs. Whittaker had to go to Nebraska, so she doesn’t live with us anymore.”
Outrage began to nose Margo’s fear aside. “So who takes care of you?”
Ariel lifted her shoulders again. “I don’t know.”
The father had to be an idiot, or incompetent. Did he have a clue his daughter was wandering the streets alone, talking to strangers? Confronted with both anger and fear, Margo fought against letting such strong emotions run amok. She’d find Ariel’s daddy and calmly give him a piece of her mind. “Let’s track down your kitten.”
“He’ll come pretty soon.”
In kid time or cat time? Either way, Margo figured it could be anywhere from five minutes to five hours. “Maybe we can bribe him to come out in the open. I’ll go open a can of tuna fish.”
“Okay.”
Margo entered the back door at the side of the house, walked through a utility room and then into the kitchen. Since she’d organized her cupboards just that morning, she knew where to find the can opener. She scooped half a can of tuna onto a paper plate and broke it up to release as much odor as possible. Hurrying back to Ariel, she pulled up short at the sight of a man standing beside the child.
He turned when the screen door banged shut behind her, and immediate images imprinted themselves on her brain. Reddish gold hair. A sprinkling of freckles. Dark eyes locked with hers, challenging and furious.
Was he a threat? To Ariel? The twin beasts of fear and anger roared inside her. “Who the he—”
Then his uniform registered, and her fingers crushed the edge of the paper plate.
A cop. A big one. Over six feet with shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway. Her heart sprinted into double time, and a lump formed in her throat too large to swallow around. She’d never met a cop who wasn’t hard, cynical, detached, driven by duty. She’d met plenty who pretended compassion only to manipulate.
This one intimidated her by his size and his demeanor. She ran a nervous tongue over her bottom lip, and hated herself for even a minor show of weakness. She channeled her defensiveness into indignation. “You’d better have a very good reason for being in my yard.”
“I came for my daughter.”
Ariel’s daddy. Indignation magnified into outrage at his carelessness. She let anger flow without restraint. “Your daughter? And you let her wander the streets alone? Are you out of your mind? She’s too young to protect herself, or even recognize a dangerous situation. If you don’t know better as a father, you should as a cop. What if something—”
He held up his hand. His hard eyes bored into hers. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”
As quickly as her anger rose, fear took its place. She wanted to stay on the good side of the law, to avoid doing anything that might cause suspicion. Regaining control, Margo struggled to make her voice calm again. “She came for her kitten.”
“That’s what she said.”
Margo edged past him and handed the plate of tuna to Ariel. Ariel grinned up at her father and put the plate in her lap.
“Ariel knows she’s not supposed to walk home from school by herself.”
The man’s tone raised hairs on the back of Margo’s neck. Did he think she’d kidnapped the cat just to get her hands on his child? Possibly. Heaven knew, she understood the force of circumstantial evidence. She met his eyes, determined to regain impassivity, and offered no apology.
He held her gaze until silence grew heavy between them. Margo’s nerves stretched as she wondered what he saw, what he thought, what he’d do. Then Ariel tugged on his pant leg and pointed up into the big cottonwood.
“It’s working, Daddy. Look, Jelly was in the tree and now he’s coming down all by himself.”
As soon as the kitten settled into the feast, the man took the plate of tuna away, handed it back to Margo, and swept both Ariel and Jelly into his arms. “Hold on to him, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
As he strode toward the trellis fence, Ariel peeped over his shoulder. “Bye,” she called, waving her adorable little hand.
“Bye,” Margo murmured.
“Can I come again?”
“Perha—” Margo began.
“We’ll talk about it at home,” the man interjected.
Putting her hand on her father’s face, Ariel pulled it around to make him look at her. “She’s nice, Daddy.”
The man stopped to unlatch the gate. “You know the rules, Scooter. You stay at the school until someone picks you up.”
“Daddy—”
“No exceptions.”
Shooting Margo one last piercing glance, Ariel’s father carried the little girl across the back alley. He opened a gate into the yard immediately behind hers.
Only when they’d disappeared inside their house did Margo’s legs collapse under her. She crumpled onto the ground, right where she’d sat in blissful ignorance and enjoyed his daughter’s company. God. A cop. The sheriff to be precise. And she’d ripped into him without the slightest concern for the consequences.
Damn. Hadn’t she worked for years to overcome her old tendency to let passion rule her actions? Hadn’t she identified when and where she was most susceptible? Hadn’t she made a science of the self-control she longed to have?
Obviously she’d met with so little challenge these past few years that the new concept of herself had never been tested. Until now. Today a flash flood of emotions had washed toward her and her dam of self-protection had given way.
Closing her eyes, she dragged deep calming breaths into her lungs and tried to imagine how it had looked through the cop’s eyes. Her anger had been out of concern for his child. Maybe that was all he’d see. Maybe he’d even appreciate Margo. for her concern when he had a chance to think about it. Maybe everything was okay.
She’d done nothing she couldn’t defend, said nothing she regretted. She had to believe she hadn’t put her new life at risk.
She had a new start in a new town where no one knew her or her past. She had a new identity that would give her the freedom to be a regular citizen and have normal relationships. She had a career, writing to her heart’s content, creating worlds, characters, crises, and above all, happy endings.
Riley’s concern for Ariel’s safety didn’t evaporate just because he had her safe in his arms. The three weeks since he’d lost his housekeeper hadn’t gone smoothly, but he’d managed. Evenings and weekends he had a list of teenagers to choose from. During the day, when he couldn’t get to the school himself, someone had filled in for him.
Today he’d been a little late, but it wasn’t the first time. And until today Ariel had always persuaded a friend or two to stay and play with her while she waited. Finding her gone, he’d put out an alert and within minutes all his deputies and most of his staff were looking for her. His whole available force. And the entire time, she was practically in their own backyard. He’d hear about this one for a while.
With Ariel still in his arms, he picked up the phone to have Liz send out the word she was okay.
“Daddy, we need to feed Jelly. Can we give him tuna fish?”
“You want to reward him for running away?”
“Oh, Daddy.”
Ariel squirmed, so Riley let her slide to the floor while he placed the call. The dispatcher’s relief told him Ariel would be the queen of the station after causing such a stir. Speak of reinforcing unacceptable behavior. Resigned, he hung up and turned to Ariel.
At five, she went her own way so engagingly he found it difficult to be strict with her. And he was her father. Everyone else catered to her as if she were royalty.
“So do I spank you, or send you to bed without dinner, or ground you for the rest of your life?”
She giggled and his stomach clenched. “It’s not funny, Ariel. I’ve been looking for you for almost an hour, and so have a lot of other people. We worry about you.”
“But, Daddy, I came straight home from school. Clara and James don’t have to wait for someone to pick them up. Why do I have to?”
“Because Clara and James walk together, and they go to Clara’s house, and Clara’s mommy is there waiting for them.”
“It’s not my fault I don’t have a mommy. And when you don’t come, it’s boring at the school.”
Riley swallowed a sigh. He couldn’t refute her logic, and he didn’t know how to instill a sense of caution in her without scaring her to death. “I know, Scooter, but—”
She opened the pantry and got out a can of cat food. “Don’t be mad, Daddy.”
“I’m not mad, Ariel, I’m—”
“Then don’t frown.” She scrunched her face into a glare, held it for about two seconds, then burst into a little giggle.
“Okay, I’m mad. I don’t want you to ever leave the school alone again.”
Ariel only laughed, reminding him far too vividly of Kendra. Once, his wife’s confidence that life held no dangers had captivated him; she’d believed in her own invulnerability and insisted on pushing the edge of the envelope. Two years ago she’d challenged a blizzard, relying on a lifetime of experience with Wyoming roads. But she’d lost control of her car, and he and Ariel had lost her. In his daughter, that same conviction of immunity kept him constantly on edge.
Ariel pushed a chair over to the counter and climbed up to fit the cat-food can into the electric can opener. Her cool competence in the kitchen reminded him how quickly she was growing up, and reinforced his fear.
“Did you hear what I said? I don’t want you wandering around by yourself.”
“okay.”
But the promise came so easily that Riley doubted he’d gotten through to her. It terrified him to think what it would take to instill caution in her. He hated that there were enough mean, angry, scary people out there to make prevention necessary.
Once she had the cat food open, Ariel looked over her shoulder at him. “That lady was nice.”
“Was she?” With effort, Riley pulled himself out of his deep thoughts to reconnect with the present. That lady. Their new neighbor across the alley. He’d thought her both feisty and remote. It would take a meeting when his own emotions weren’t topping the chart to form a real opinion of her temperament.
“Oh, yes,” Ariel continued. “And pretty.”
“Yeah?” More like beautiful, in an exotic sort of way. Her olive skin, dark eyes and black hair indicated a Hispanic or Mediterranean heritage—probably Hispanic, given the Southern inflection of her words. Her fine bones and delicate features gave an impression of fragility that would bring out the protective instinct in any man. Definitely beautiful.
“Yes. And she helped me remember Mommy.”
“Oh, Scooter.” Riley closed the distance between them and cupped her chin tenderly with his palm. The last two years had been tough on them both.
“I sang, ‘Merry Airy, merry, merry, merry, Ariel.”’
He hadn’t heard the familiar tune since Kendra died, but over his daughter’s high little voice, he heard Kendra’s rich alto singing the love ditty she’d made up the day they’d named their baby. Along with Kendra’s voice he could hear her laugh, almost feel her touch.
Unwilling to confront ghosts of the past, he shut the images away. After two years he thought of his wife only when, with a word or a gesture, Ariel brought her suddenly to mind. He didn’t need to start hearing the Airy tune on Ariel’s lips.
Pulling his daughter into his arms, he sat on the chair. She straddled his legs and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Scooter, I know you miss—”
“Now I’m not scared I’ll forget what she looked like.”
“Were you?” Before he could guard against them, a flood of memories poured over him. Almost curiously, he sifted through them, but he couldn’t find a clear image of Kendra’s face. Snatches of conversations, impressions of good times, a whiff of her scent, the feel of her hair, a flash of her smile. But no firm, indelible picture.
Stunned, he stared at Ariel and tried to find Kendra’s face. It wasn’t there.
After two years of trying not to remember, it shocked him to realize he couldn’t.
Ariel sighed and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Only sometimes. Like when I’m unhappy and I want her, and she just isn’t there.”
It took Riley a second to retrack their conversation. It hadn’t occurred to him his daughter could be longing for the very thing he’d been trying to bury. “I miss her, too.”
“That lady knew I was scared I’d forget, so she told me just to sing. Then she made Jelly stop hiding. I like her.”
“I can see that, but—”
“Please let me go back, Daddy.”
Ariel’s plea took Riley back another couple of steps. She wanted to visit their new neighbor. In this, he had no muddled feelings. “What have I always taught you about talking to strangers?”
Ariel widened her eyes artlessly, indicating she thought she had him licked. “People who live in the same neighborhood can’t be strangers.”
“We don’t know anything about her.”
“We can ask.”
Ariel was right. Sort of. In Laramie, so far, neighbors were not strangers to each other. But the horrors endemic to other, bigger cities were moving in. And sometimes danger hid in unlikely places. He cupped Ariel’s face in his palm. “Promise me you won’t go over there alone.”
“Then come with me. Please. Because she might die, like Mommy did, and I don’t have a way to remember her.”
Riley cuddled Ariel against his chest. A child should not have to deal with the unpredictability of life. She shouldn’t have to play little games to remember the face of someone she loved. And she shouldn’t be deprived of kindness just because one icy night her mother died in an automobile accident and left her father leery of the unknown.
“Let me think about it. In the meantime, don’t go over there alone.”
“Thanks, Daddy.” Ariel gave him a noisy, giggly kiss. Then she grew solemn again and pulled back to look at him earnestly. “Daddy, will I ever have a mommy again?”
“I don’t know.” He thought about it occasionally, especially when he didn’t know how he could give his daughter everything she needed. Or when she seemed too much child for one person to handle. He’d thought about it today, when she’d disappeared from the school before he could pick her up.
But marrying again didn’t mean Ariel would automatically have a full-time mother—or that he would find a woman who could curb Ariel’s recklessness. And more than that, he wasn’t sure he could add the anxiety he’d feel for a wife to his worry for his daughter. Before Kendra’s death, he’d taken life’s risks as a matter of course, as part of his job. Now he measured every aspect of his life against them.
“When Whiskers got lost and I missed her so much, we got another kitten.”
Not quite sure what she needed, Riley folded his daughter in his arms. “We were really lucky to find another kitten that was just right.”
“Can we look for another mommy?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy, Scooter.”
She wriggled free of his embrace and giggled. “But, Daddy, it is. I wished for Jelly and I got him. So I’ll just wish for a new mommy.”
She slid off his lap, picked up the can of cat food and skipped across the room to empty it into Jelly’s dish. Great. Now Ariel was wishing for a new mommy, as if people gave them away through the Want Ads, like a kitten. Free to good home. Box trained.
Ariel was a terrific kid, and he’d give her the moon if he could. She’d adjusted to losing Kendra better than anyone expected. In spite of being one of the youngest in her class, she did well in school. She might be too adventuresome for his comfort, but her spunk made her popular with the other kids. So why couldn’t they go on as they were?
She’d just thrown him a curveball he couldn’t possibly hit, and now she knelt on the floor, petting Jelly as if—
The bottom of her left sock was dirty and grass-stained. “Ariel, where’s your shoe?”
She sat back, stretched out her legs and wiggled her shoeless foot. Hunching her shoulders, she looked up at him solemnly. “I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
She pondered for a while, but he didn’t hold much hope she would remember, since she hadn’t even realized it was missing.
“I had it when I came home from school.”
“Did you have it when you came home here?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you have it on when you were visiting the lady?”
She lifted her shoulders again. “I don’t remember.”
“Sheesh, Ariel. How could you forget losing your shoe?”
Sticking out her bottom lip, she examined her foot again. “It has to be somewhere.”
Yeah. Anywhere between the kitchen and the school. Which covered about two square miles, since he doubted she’d taken a direct route or could retrace whatever way she’d come. It wasn’t worth a full-scale search, but he could check with their new neighbor.
In fact, the missing shoe would be a very good excuse to pursue Ariel’s request. He could pay their new neighbor a visit. Learn her name. See if he could depend on her concern for Ariel. Because at the very least, it never hurt to have as many people as possible keeping an eye out for his headstrong little girl.
Margo couldn’t get Ariel—or Ariel’s father—out of her head. Between the two of them, they’d left her mind in a whirl, and nothing she’d tried had restored her equilibrium.
Not a shower, not fixing supper, not unpacking a couple more boxes. Even her heroine’s next exploit couldn’t hold her concentration. Finally she gave up the effort.
She brewed a pot of decaf, put some melancholy music on the stereo and wrapped herself in an afghan by the fire.
She wasn’t sure who had affected her most, the girl or her father. The father was a sheriff. And so what if he was? Past was past, right? With her new identity, she had a spotless record, a clear conscience, and a limitless future.
Unfortunately, she also knew both people and the system too well to be neutral. With people, a hint of suspicion would lead to judgment, an impression too quickly became a fact, and past sins were never forgotten. With the system, a single misstep could tumble a person into a legal landslide, and from then on you could kiss a normal life goodbye.
She sipped her coffee, leaned back and closed her eyes. No, society wasn’t perfect, and most people did the best they could. She had no one to blame but herself.
Looking back, her fault had lain in how recklessly she’d followed where her emotions led. She’d let grief after her grandmother’s death lead her into a relationship with Nick. She’d let herself need him so much that she did anything he wanted and made excuses for his abuse. Her love for their baby had made her blind to the downward spiral of her relationship with Holly’s father.
Since coming to that conclusion, she’d worked at self-discipline. She’d practiced deliberating alternatives and thinking before she acted. She’d learned to look ahead and imagine where different alternatives would lead. She thought she’d mastered control.
Ha!
Just today, so many emotions had erupted in such a short space of time, she couldn’t catalog them all. Starting with feelings she hadn’t experienced since losing Holly.
She hadn’t been a part of her daughter’s life since Holly was eight months old. She hadn’t watched Holly learn to walk or count or tell time. She didn’t know if Holly took music lessons or played soccer or could ride a horse. She had never heard Holly sing a song. In giving her daughter a chance for security, she’d forfeited any right to ever be a part of Holly’s life.
Could anyone blame her for enjoying Ariel’s company for a little while?
The girl’s father could. He obviously did.
Margo sighed. It was just as well. She couldn’t picture herself becoming very well acquainted with a cop—no matter how close they might live as neighbors. No matter how much she might like to know his daughter better.
Chapter Two
On a block of light-filled houses, hers looked dark and lonely. A single square of yellow illuminated a room on the ground floor, but it held no life. Instead, it gave the impression of no one home, as if the lights were controlled by a timer. Riley strode up the walk and punched the doorbell.
Ariel had been on him all afternoon to visit her lady friend. It had been one of those days when he hadn’t been able to find anyone. to take care of her, so she’d spent the afternoon at the station, and she’d lauded their new neighbor to everyone who would listen. It had been “she” said this, and “she” did that, until his entire staff had joined her crusade. He was damn glad he had Ariel’s missing shoe as an excuse for this visit.
With Ariel praising the woman nonstop, he’d replayed his encounter with her at least a dozen times. He should have thanked her for her concern for Ariel, instead of reacting like some kind of Neanderthal defending his territory. He must have seemed pretty formidable, for her to back down so quickly. But he’d been too determined to drum some sense into Ariel’s head to think about much else.
He wished he could believe he’d made some progress with his daughter.
Since he hadn’t heard the doorbell ring, Riley punched it again. Still nothing. Through the sheer curtain that covered the window in the door, he saw no movement. Maybe the bell was broken. Or maybe she wasn’t home. He rapped on the door frame, but no one stirred inside. She could be anywhere. Shopping. Taking a walk. At a movie. He pushed the bell one more time for good measure then turned to go.
He was halfway down the walk when the porch light came on, pouring a bluish white glow across the front lawn. He wheeled around in surprise.
She stood behind a screen door with her face in shadow. “Hello?”
Her voice sounded more tentative than he remembered, huskier, sexier. Different circumstances, but the same woman. Yet not the same. In daylight, she’d seemed challenging, austere, remote. In the cool quiet evening, she seemed vulnerable.
“It’s Ariel’s dad.”
“Oh.” She didn’t invite him in, or even unlatch the door.
Not one to be put off by an attitude, especially one he’d had a hand in creating, Riley returned to the porch. “Have I come at a bad time?”
“What do you want?”
He tried to put his impressions of her into perspective. This was Laramie, a friendly little town where most people believed, as Kendra had, that harm would never touch them; most folks still didn’t lock their doors at night. She had none of that affability. He wondered if he’d killed it with his gruff manner that afternoon.
Or maybe her caution was instinctive, gained in a bigger, meaner city. It was exactly the kind of restraint he’d give half a year’s salary to instill in Ariel.
But directed at himself, he hated it. It acted as a barrier between him and this new neighbor, even though they lived within hailing distance of each other. All his life he’d enjoyed the security of trust among his neighbors. Now the sudden comparison between what he wanted for Ariel and what he wanted for himself annoyed him.
The way this woman wrapped reserve around her like a cloak challenged him.
With a grin, he relaxed his stance to put her more at ease. “I’m sorry to bother you, but Ariel lost her shoe this afternoon, and I’m trying to track it down.”
Her reticence turned to concern in an instant. “Oh, goodness. It’s probably still in the fence. Please come in. I saw a flashlight this morning when I unpacked the kitchen, and with any luck I should be able to find where I put it. We can go straight out back from there.”
She found the flashlight in a kitchen drawer, and by its weak glow she led him into the yard, across the lawn, through the gate, and out into the alley. She played the light across her rickety trellis fence, and when it came to rest on Ariel’s shoe, Riley’s gut clenched.
Three feet off the ground, the shoe was wedged almost to the instep. If Ariel had fallen with her foot caught that high, her leg could have snapped like a dry twig.
Riley jerked the shoe free, half scared, half angry, needing to vent. But he’d been a cop too long to lash out.
“I caught her before she fell.”
Neither the woman’s words nor her calm tone reassured him. For the shoe to have remained forgotten in the fence, she must have caught Ariel as she fell. She’d saved his daughter from a broken leg. Or worse.
Because of her, Ariel was home safe, ready for bed and reading stories with her favorite teenage sitter. The alternatives made him shudder. The debt he owed this woman opened his heart, and he wanted to let her know the depth of his appreciation. He wanted to tear down the barriers and start to build the friendship that made for good neighbors.
He didn’t want her to dismiss him before he’d accomplished his full errand. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
She shrugged. “I was glad to be close enough to help.”
He smiled, although she wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark. “Look, do you think it would be okay if I came in for a minute? Ariel’s been begging me all afternoon to visit you again, but maybe you’d feel more comfortable with that if you felt more comfortable with me.”
She hesitated, but in the dark he couldn’t tell if she was assessing him or trying to come up with an excuse. Just as he’d given up hope, her voice broke into the still night.
“Okay. For a few minutes.”
Smiling to himself, he followed her back inside.
She ushered him straight into the living room. On his first pass through her house, he’d been too focused on Ariel’s shoe to pay much attention. Now what he saw brought him up short. The room screamed of loneliness.
A stack of cartons lined one wall, waiting to be unpacked. Against an opposite wall, several stacks of books eight or ten high formed an irregular border on the floor. The scuffed hardwood floor had no rugs; the drapes looked as if they’d hung at the windows for fifty years, and pale squares on the empty walls showed where someone else had hung their pictures. Two mismatched armchairs bracketed a hearth where a fire crackled, the only settled aspect in the room.
The intensity of her isolation tightened around his lungs like a clamp. When Kendra died, he’d felt the way this room looked.
“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Juice? White wine?”
He wanted more than ever to know her better. “You don’t need to go to any trouble.”
“I have water on tap, orange juice in the refrigerator, and the coffee’s decaf but fairly fresh. I’d have to open the wine.” She didn’t smile, but she recited the options with a graciousness that inclined him to believe she didn’t regret her decision to let him come in.
Coffee seemed too businesslike. Water too mundane. Wine too intimate. “Orange juice, please.”
She wore jeans, a long pale sweater that molded to her waist and hips, and sneakers without socks. He added defenseless to his expanding impression of her—still as remote as she’d seemed that afternoon, but fragile rather than hard.
She served the juice in heavy deep-bowled goblets with short stems and thin gold rims. Crystal, for all he knew, and so inconsistent with the sorry state of her furnishings that he found himself staring at her.
She drew herself straighter. “Please, sit down.”
A little embarrassed, he sat and offered a grin he hoped would convey the favorable feelings he had for her. She curled into her chair with one leg under her and the other knee to her chest. He couldn’t decide whether she looked relaxed or defensive. Even the way she watched him over the rim of her goblet could be either speculative or cautious.
“Maybe it’s time we introduced ourselves. I’m Riley Corbett.”
“Margo Haynes.” She sipped her juice, then lowered her goblet with a slight smile. The firelight flickered over her face and highlighted her hair. She looked delicate and beautiful—and younger than she’d seemed that afternoon. It must have been the stark sunlight that had made him think she knew how to deal with life head-on.
He forced his attention back to the conversation. “I’d like to explain about this afternoon.”
“There’s no need.”
“I think there is. I lost my housekeeper a couple of weeks ago, and haven’t been able to replace her. Without a sitter, I try to be at the school when Ariel gets out, but sometimes I don’t make it by the bell. I’ve explained to her how important it is to wait until I get there, but she’s got a mind of her own. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to hunt her down.”
To keep the edge of anxiety from his voice as much as to relieve the sudden dryness in his mouth, he drank deeply. In the pause, he realized Margo Haynes was staring past him, at something more in her mind than in the room.
The lull only lasted a second before she blinked it away. “I can only guess how much you must worry.”
“Yeah.” But it didn’t seem like a guess. Somewhere in her tone or in her expressions, he sensed she knew the same concern. “I’d never forgive myself if anything ever happened to her.”
“No parent would.” She met his eyes over the rim of her goblet.
Something in her eyes rippled across the room and spread warmth across his skin. Not humor. Not invitation. Not even empathy. Unable to identify it, he let it slide over him like a breeze. He’d come for his daughter’s sake, and he’d expected his daughter to be their only common ground. “Ariel really liked visiting you today.”
“So did I. Very much.”
“You gave. her something I didn’t know she needed.”
A brief hesitation played across Margo’s features and lengthened into a pause before she spoke. “Maybe it was a fair trade.”
“Her mother died two years ago. It hasn’t been easy for either of us.”
“No.”
In the murmur of that single word Riley recognized the landscape of longing. The dark, empty paths he’d traveled since Kendra’s death had taken him to places he never wanted to visit again. Reminded of them by this woman’s tone, he searched her face.
She spoke before he could think of the right thing to say. “I wanted to read you the riot act for letting her wander around alone.”
He remembered. “I’d say you had a pretty good start on one. What slowed you down?”
With a debut of a smile that shimmered too briefly, she lifted her glass and met his eyes over the rim. “A strong self-preservation instinct.”
With a self-conscious laugh, he settled back and propped one ankle on the opposite knee. “Sorry about that.”
“Actually, your worry reassured me. I didn’t like to think of her straying around like that because nobody cared enough to be sure she didn’t.”
True concern for his daughter radiated from Margo Haynes, although Riley couldn’t say how. But she had an intensity—interest, warmth, something--that he hadn’t gotten from even those friends who’d helped him fill in the gaps after Kendra died. Or more recently, since Mrs. Whittaker left.
Far stronger than the brief impact of her smile, it resonated through him with an almost sensuous cadence, in an undertone like the low thrum of a city heard from a distance. Determined to ignore whatever it was, he stretched out his legs and polished off his juice. “So, what brought you to Laramie? Work?”
She shook her head and shifted her eyes to the fire. “The university library.” Her smile stayed fixed, but the vibration between them changed, not in speed but in timbre. No longer smooth, it took on a raspy, discordant quality.
In a lifetime of meeting people, confronting them, interrogating them, rescuing them and soothing them, Riley had never experienced anything like the rhythm pulsing between them. He wanted to know its cause, understand it, maybe explore it.
“Librarian?”
She shook her head. “Writer.”
“I guess writers need access to a good library.”
“It helps us keep our facts straight.”
As an outdoor type guy, he couldn’t imagine a job that could only be done while sitting down. The amount of desk work he had to do pushed the limits of his tolerance. “And where did you move from?”
“Texas.” The way she kept her eyes fixed on the fire made him wonder what she saw—how far away and how long ago. “I came here from Texas.”
“Just in time to enjoy winter in Wyoming.”
She shrugged. “I was tired of the heat.”
In the firelight, her eyes glinted, but he couldn’t tell if the sparkle was a trick of the blaze or came from within. It disconcerted him not to be able to read her. Interpreting people was a big part of his job, and he was good at it. He had a sixth sense that worked about ninety-five percent of the time. He could usually tell if someone was lying, or planning to pull a fast one, or sucking up, or scared, or willing to cooperate. He got none of those impressions from her.
The lack of tension in her expression made him wonder what the hell caused that unfamiliar vibration that continued between them. It had to be coming from her, yet it beat through him like his pulse.
As if oblivious to it, she sipped from her goblet. “Are you from here?”
“Upstate. My folks live in Powell.”
She stood and crossed to the fireplace. Orange light danced across half her face, throwing the other half into soft shadow. “I hear it’s beautiful country up there.”
Almost as beautiful as the view from where he sat.
He quelled the emotion behind the thought. Margo Haynes was a stranger. Twenty minutes ago he hadn’t even known her name. Ten hours ago he hadn’t known she existed. He had to concentrate on why he’d come. For Ariel. This had nothing to do with Margo’s beauty, her loneliness, her vulnerability, or her damn radiance. But hell, she was exquisite.
“Ariel and I go up as often as we can. You’d like it in early summer, when the wildflowers are at their peak.”
“Probably.”
Another tremor warped the rhythm, again without an outward sign that what either of them said affected her in any way. Riley backtracked through the conversation, but he couldn’t find a pattern.
Margo finished her juice. Serenely. Wasn’t the pulse vibrating through her as strong and baffling as it throbbed through him?
“Are your parents both still alive?” she asked.
“Yeah. They own a store, and are going as strong as ever. Yours?”
“I lost them both a long time ago. I’ll bet yours dote on Ariel.”
“Every chance they get.”
“She’s a lucky girl.”
“She has a knack for winning hearts. She’s got everyone in my department wrapped around her little finger. My parents think she walks on water.”
“I can see why. She’s delightful.”
Drawn before he realized it, Riley joined her at the fireplace. “She’d like to visit you again.”
Excitement played across Margo’s face as if she were a kid at a carnival, and her eyes grew brighter. “I’d like that. If it’s all right with you.”
The rhythm pulsed faster, denser, sweeter. It pulled through his nerve endings until his hands trembled with it. With the need to touch her.
Suddenly he knew he couldn’t stay. Not another minute. Not another second. Or he’d take her in his arms, press his lips to hers, consume her if necessary to ease the heat and tension that stretched between them—whether it existed for her or not.
“I’d better go. I have Ariel’s shoe, and that’s what I came for.”
“Yes.”
Resisting the pull that drew him to her, Riley backed to the middle of the room.
As calm as a doe in a spring meadow, she followed him with her eyes. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Corbett.”
“Riley,” he insisted, though he didn’t know why. Whatever resonated between them might beat like the drum of an ancient mating dance, but he recognized it as the rhythm of danger.
Margo stood at the window and watched Riley Corbett leave her yard for the second time that day. God, what an ordeal.
Since first realizing how runaway emotions had propelled her into every bad decision she’d ever made, she’d concentrated on controlling her feelings. And she’d learned how. She could hold her temper in the face of provocation. She no longer wept during sentimental movies. She’d learned to listen to the troubles of others without jumping in to help. She let insults skim across her like water off a waxed surface. She’d become a stranger to rampant feelings, and she liked it that way.
At least that had been true until today. Until Ariel Corbett and her father had exploded into her life.
How long had he been in her living room? Less than forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of torture, with emotions clawing inside her like rats for release. Concern. Envy. Excitement. Compassion. Anticipation. Desire.
Lord, not to mention desire.
It had zipped between them like electricity on an ungrounded wire. Hot and deadly. Ignoring it had been impossible. Leaving it unacknowledged had taken all the strength she possessed.
She should have shown him the door the second she sensed the attraction. But loneliness and longing—deadly emotions both—had driven her to prolong his visit.
She hadn’t had a friend in more than a dozen years, not since taking up with Nick. Almost from their first date, Nick had separated her from her small circle of girlfriends. She’d been so in love with him, she hadn’t noticed. Back then she’d believed love could heal every wound and fill every empty space, and she’d loved too fiercely to see it wasn’t so.
Love was a vain promise. Desire made one crazy. Emotions tromped good common sense into the ground. She knew those things to be true as surely as she breathed. So how had the demons broken free? How difficult was it going to be to lock them away again?
Did she need friends now as desperately as she’d once needed Nick’s love?
The possibility terrified her.
Yet she’d made Riley Corbett welcome in her home. She hoped he’d let her befriend his daughter. For the first time in years, she dared hope the awful ache left from when she’d lost Holly could be eased.
With her hand gripping the window frame, she forced deep, steadying breaths into her lungs and focused on Ariel. Margo wanted nothing from Riley beyond an agreement that his daughter could visit once in a while. And maybe she wanted that too much for her own well-being. Maybe she should shut herself off from any contact at all with that little girl.
But how could she? With Ariel, she’d experienced joy for the first time since giving Holly away. The desert of her soul had started to bloom again. Just the merest opening of the first blossom, but she couldn’t turn away from it.
No matter how terrifying the current that rippled between herself and Riley Corbett, she would open herself to his child.
Unable to sleep, Riley pulled on a sweat suit and running shoes. At 3:00 a.m. the streets would be empty and the silence might calm his thoughts. When he checked in on Ariel, his heart swelled against his ribs. He loved her beyond thought, and he would fight the world to keep her safe.
And yesterday he’d met someone eager to join him in the battle. He knew it without a doubt, although he’d never be able to explain to anyone else how he knew.
Leaving the hall light burning, he slipped silently out of the house. By confining his run to laps around the block, he could check on Ariel every few minutes.
When he passed Margo’s house, he slowed his pace a bit. No doubt she slept as peacefully as Ariel, since that strange vibration hadn’t seemed to touch her at all.
For him it echoed as strongly as the conversation. And the conversation had been playing like a subliminal tape nonstop.
Since leaving her house, the entire visit kept running through his head. Every word, every action, every glance that passed between them. And the more he rehearsed his visit, the more one fact became startlingly clear. He’d learned damn little about her.
She was a writer, she came from Texas, and neither of her parents was still alive. That was it. He’d asked questions. He’d offered facts about his own life. The conversation had not suffered from awkward pauses. As smooth as silk, she’d slid away from telling him anything about herself.
Why?
In little more than an hour, spread across two separate encounters, both he and Ariel had connected with Margo Haynes in deep, emotional, compelling ways. She’d given Ariel more welcome and solace than Ariel had known since Kendra’s death. To him, she’d offered concern for his daughter, opened the doors to friendship and infused him with desire.
He wanted more of her. Much more.
In the two years since Kendra’s death, he’d made Ariel the core of his life, and they’d done just fine together with Mrs. Whittaker’s help. So had everything changed three weeks ago when he’d lost his live-in housekeeper? Or only this afternoon, when Ariel first met Margo Haynes?
As he passed Margo’s house again, a sense of destiny infused him. He didn’t know anything about her, except that her concern and devotion for his daughter transcended logic. But he knew himself; and for himself, he wanted to get to know her better.
From her back window Margo could see Riley Corbett’s house. It was yellow, with white trim and shutters and a dark green roof. With a shake of her head, she leaned against the window frame. Riley Corbett seemed as friendly and guileless as any boy next door. But he was a cop. What would he think of her if he knew the truth? Did she have an obligation to tell him?
She shouldn’t have to. She’d paid her debt to society with three years in prison and seven more on parole. Finally free, she’d shaken the dust of the past from her feet, chosen a new name, closed her eyes and stuck her finger on the map. She’d picked the closest city with a university, and moved to Laramie. Approximately fifteen hundred miles from the gulf coast of Texas.
No one, not even the sheriff of her new town, needed to know of her past. Being his neighbor included no duty to reveal the deep dark secrets of her past. What was the point in creating a new life if she blurted out the truth the first time she felt a qualm?
Ever since the robbery she’d dealt with the consequences of her choices, never once turning away from the legal and logical repercussions. She hadn’t known Nick intended to hold up the convenience store. She hadn’t known he killed the clerk. But when he rushed out, pointed his gun at Holly and yelled at her to drive, she’d punched the gas for all she was worth. And from that moment until she’d moved away from Texas, Margo’s life had been hell.
At first she’d imagined that once she paid the penalty exacted by society, her slate would be wiped clean and she could move forward freely. Since her release from prison, however, she’d learned that regardless of the penalty, some things were never forgiven.
Serving her parole in her hometown, she’d been shunned, harassed, held up for public exhibition, and used as a cautionary tale for teenage girls. Her past followed wherever she went, no matter how straight a line she walked.
No one ever stopped to imagine her own personal grief over her role in the murder Nick committed. No one ever took into account that she’d lost her daughter as a result of her complicity.
Now she intended to start anew, and she wanted this new life more than she cared about her career or her immediate happiness. She couldn’t imagine a situation in which she would put it at risk. Certainly she wouldn’t jeopardize it because some man jump-started her libido after eleven years on hold.
Turning to the sink, she filled a glass with water and drank deeply. More than a decade had passed since that blackest point in her life, and she’d paid dearly for her mistakes. By honoring the law to the letter and by building a good strong career as a novelist, she’d proven to herself how completely she’d overcome her past. When her last book hit the best-seller list, she’d gained an independence that reinforced her freedom.
She had spent the seven years since her release from prison working to recreate herself. As a final step, she’d adapted her given name, using Margo instead of Maggie, and taken her mother’s maiden name to reinforce the new person she’d become. After so much work, she didn’t intend to risk everything just because some wayward twinge of conscience kept reminding her Margo Haynes was a lie. Especially when that twinge sprang from an emotion as dangerous as desire.
Chapter Three
“Good try, Riley,” Cassie McMurrin said with a laugh. “But I’m not about to become a day care center, even for you.”
In frustration, Riley crumpled a used envelope and pitched it into the wastebasket. In little more than an hour Ariel would be out of school, and he still didn’t have somewhere to take her. And if he wasn’t right at the door when the bell rang, she might decide to take off by herself again. No longer able to depend on her to wait, he’d run his schedule exactly by the school bell for two days straight.
He might as well just quit his job and be a stay-at-home dad, since he seemed to be getting less and less accomplished at work. To keep his stress from coming through in his voice, he grinned at the phone. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“I would, however, love to have Ariel this afternoon, if you can pick her up by six.”
“You’re an angel. I’ll bring her by as soon as school’s out.”
“Sam’ll be excited to have someone to play with.”
“Great. Thanks. I owe you one.”
The McMurrins had a ranch several miles out of town, where Cassie trained cutting horses and taught barrel racing. Riley had put her name at the bottom of his list of possible sitters for two reasons. First, she and Kendra had gone to school together, and he didn’t want to trespass on that old friendship. Second, he’d rather have Ariel somewhere in town. But after three weeks of trying to find a permanent solution, he’d broadened his perimeters.
Camille Whittaker had lived with him and Ariel since just after Kendra’s death, and he’d banked on having her forever. When she moved to Nebraska suddenly to take care of her very elderly mother, her departure had left him in the lurch. It was his own fault. He should have had a contingency plan. But everything had been going so well.
He was still trying to find a live-in. His hours were sporadic and unpredictable, and structured day care only worked well for nine-to-five types. He’d begun advertising in the university newspaper and had gotten a lot of calls, but students kept hours as erratic as his own and he hadn’t found one willing to give up a social life for someone else’s kid.
A sharp knock on his open office door brought him alert with a start.
Wade Ferguson strode in without waiting for an invitation and slapped the morning paper on his desk. “Looks like momentum’s building for that blasted golf course.”
“Damn.” Riley rolled his chair closer to the desk to see what had provoked Wade’s temper. With the important headline circled in a thick black line, he focused right on the article.
Ten months ago a group of concerned parents had banded together in an organization they called Legal Activities For Fun. They’d decided their teenagers were more likely to stay out of trouble if the kids had somewhere to hang out, so they’d made a proposal to the country commission to build facilities in Sage Creek, a piece of undeveloped land the county had held for years. They envisioned a playing field that could handle baseball and soccer, tennis courts, a club for dancing, pool and arcade games, and eventually an amphitheater for concerts and summer stock productions. They called it The LAFF Place. The mayor and both law enforcement agencies—police and sheriff—had backed the idea immediately.
Also immediately one of the county commissioners had introduced a proposal to build a golf course in Sage Creek. Cal Davenport presented it as an idea he’d been working on for a long time, although no whisper of it had reached Riley’s ears. Before long, an outspoken group not limited to golfers began voicing their support. Now there would be two choices for Sage Creek on the ballot, one for The LAFF Place and one for a golf course.
Although Cal Davenport depicted the golf course as a legitimate counter proposal, he worked on people’s fears. He claimed that inviting kids to congregate in Sage Creek would turn it into a war zone for gangs. He painted pictures of drugs, sex and violence, even though the proponents were volunteering their own resources to build it, and later their talents to coach sports and their time to monitor dances and other events.
Davenport’s shortsighted intolerance made Riley’s blood boil. A huge percentage of the resources of both his department in the county and the police department in the city was spent on juvenile crime. Drunkenness, vandalism, truancy, drug use, violence, reckless driving—he’d often wondered how much of it could be attributed to boredom.
He finished the article, which covered a meeting the opponents had held the night before, and tossed the paper back to Wade. “I’m starting to really hate the good commissioner.”
Hitting the intercom, Riley drummed his fingers on the desk until the line clicked open. “Liz, will you call Ellie at the radio station and tell her I want to make a plea for the youth park and have it look like news?”
Liz laughed. “You must have seen the paper. I’ll get right on it.”
When the intercom clicked closed, Wade snagged a chair with his boot, pulled it a little closer and sat down. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to come on too strong about this.”
“You have as little patience with the golf course bunch as I do.”
“But I’m not running for reelection.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”
Wade’s grave tone gave Riley reason to listen. They’d joined the department as deputies the same year, and Wade had given him the first kick in the pants to run for sheriff. Wade had no aspirations for the job himself, but the political advice he’d given Riley had always been shrewd and consistent. “Okay, what?”
“Davenport’s acting like this issue is his ticket to reelection, and his enthusiasm for the golf course is winning him a lot of friends.”
“What does that have to do with my campaign?”
“If he views you as his opponent, you’re the one he’s going to fight.”
“Let him. He’s wrong, and if people understand the issue they’ll know he’s wrong. The county could pour three times as much money into crime prevention and not accomplish what The LAFF Place will. We’ve got everyone who cares about kids on our side. That’s a lot of committed voters.”
“Those committed voters will support you only if you’re still the favorite when the election rolls around. If Davenport can floor you, he’ll kick you while you’re down.”
Riley let Wade’s apprehension skim through his mind for about two seconds before shrugging it off. With almost six weeks until the election, he could deal with anything Davenport lobbed his way, and in the meantime, he had his hands full trying to find a child care solution for Ariel.

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