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Slow Dance with the Sheriff
Nikki Logan









THE LARKVILLE LEGACY

A secret letter…two families changed for ever

Welcome to the small town of Larkville, Texas, where the Calhoun family has been ranching for generations.

Meanwhile, in New York, the Patterson family rules America’s highest echelons of society.

Both families are totally unprepared for the news that they are linked by a shocking secret.

For hidden on the Calhoun ranch is a letter that’s been lying unopened and unread—until now!

Meet the two families in all eight books of this brand-new series:

THE COWBOY COMES HOME

by Patricia Thayer

SLOW DANCE WITH THE SHERIFF

by Nikki Logan

TAMING THE BROODING CATTLEMAN

by Marion Lennox

THE RANCHER’S UNEXPECTED FAMILY

by Myrna Mackenzie

HIS LARKVILLE CINDERELLA

by Melissa McClone

THE SECRET THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

by Lucy Gordon

THE SOLDIER’S SWEETHEART

by Soraya Lane

THE BILLIONAIRE’S BABY SOS

by Susan Meier


My Dear Fabulous Reader,

This story challenged my ideas of what makes family, and made me look closely at my own life. It’s a hard thing not quite belonging. Being the half- or step-sibling. You’re one foot in and one foot out all the time. Never quite fitting. And whether or not you acknowledge it, and whether or not those around you mean it, there are always subtle ways that’s reinforced.

So imagine what it would do to you if it was your primary family you felt you didn’t belong in. And never understood quite why. For thirty years.

Meet Ellie Patterson. Days before this story begins, dancer Ellie discovers that the man she thought was her father is not, and that she has a whole second family in small-town Texas. Despite the fact she’s never left New York, she jumps in a rental car and heads south to find the family she never knew she had. She’s more than ready to leave money and privilege behind in exchange for people who she might fit with.

Except then she meets Jed…a man who’s learned to live with his own demons. And for the first time family isn’t the biggest thing on her mind.

This was a hard story to write, but the more I got to know Ellie and Jed (and Deputy!) the more I grew to love and understand them. When ‘the end’ came it was quite hard to let them go.

I hope you enjoy meeting them as much as I did. Enjoy!

Nikki




About the Author


NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.




Slow Dance with the Sheriff

Nikki Logan















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Lesley—because mothers are always mothers, birth or otherwise.

And for Cil—because so are sisters.




CHAPTER ONE


SHERIFF JED JACKSON eased down on the brake and slid one arm across to stop his deputy sliding off the front seat.

‘Well,’ he muttered to the grizzly bear of a dog who cocked an ear in response, ‘there’s something you don’t see every day.’

A sea of loose steer spilled across the long, empty road out to the Double Bar C, their number swollen fence-to-fence to seal off the single lane accessway, all standing staring at one another, waiting for someone else to take the lead. That wasn’t the unusual part; loose cattle were common in these parts.

He squinted out his windscreen. ‘What do you reckon she’s doing?’

Adrift right in the middle of the massing herd, standing out white in a sea of brown hide, was a luxury sedan, and on its roof—standing out blue in a sea of white lacquer—was a lone female.

Jed’s mouth twitched. Ten-fifty-fours weren’t usually this entertaining, or this sizeable. This road didn’t see much traffic, especially not with the Calhouns away, but a herd of cattle really couldn’t spend the night here. His eyes lifted again to the damsel in distress, still standing high and dry with her back to him, waving her hands shouting uselessly at the cattle.

And clearly she couldn’t.

He radioed dispatch and asked them to advise the Calhoun ranch of a fence breach, then he eased his foot off the brake and edged closer to the comical scene. The steer that weren’t staring at one another looked up at the woman expectantly.

He pulled on the handbrake. ‘Stay.’

Deputy looked disappointed but slouched back into the passenger seat, his enormous tongue lolling. Jed slid his hat on and slipped out the SUV’s door, leaving it gaping. The steer didn’t even blink at his arrival they were so fixated on the woman perched high above them.

Not entirely without reason.

That was a mighty fine pair of legs tucked into tight denim and spread into a sturdy A-shape. Not baggy denim, not the loose, hanging-low-enough-to-trip-on, did-someone-outlaw-belts, de-feminising denim.

Fitted, faded, snug. As God intended jeans to be.

Down at ground level, the length of her legs and the peach of a rear topping them wouldn’t have been all that gratuitous but, from his steer-eye view, her short blouse didn’t do much to offset, either.

The moaning of the cattle had done a good job disguising his arrival but it was time to come clean. He pushed his hat back with a finger to the rim and raised his voice.

‘Ma’am, you realise it’s a state offence to hold a public assembly without a permit?’

She spun so fast she almost went over, but she steadied herself on bare feet, and then lifted her chin with grace.

Whoa. She was…

His synapses forgot how they worked as he stared and he had to will them to resume sending the signals his body needed to keep breathing. He’d never been so grateful for his county-issue sunglasses in his life; without them she’d see his eyes as round and glazed as the hypnotised steer.

‘I hope there’s a siege happening somewhere!’ she called, sliding her hands up onto her middle. Her righteousness didn’t make her any less attractive. Those little clenched fists only accentuated the oblique angle where her waist became her hips. Her continuing complaint drew his eyes back up to the perfectly even teeth she flashed as she growled at him with her non-Texan vowels.

‘Because I’ve been on this rooftop for two hours. The cows have nearly trebled since I called for help.’

Cows. Definitely a tourist.

Guess an hour was a long time when you were stuck on a roof. Jed kept it light to give his thumping pulse time to settle and to give her temper nowhere to go. ‘You’re about the most interest these steer have had all day,’ he said, keeping his voice easy, moving cautiously between the first two lumbering animals.

He leaned back against the cattle as hard as they leaned into him, slapping the occasional rump and cracking a whistle through his curled tongue. They made way enough for him to get through, but only just. ‘What are you doing up there?’

Her perfectly manicured eyebrows shot up. ‘I assume that’s a rhetorical question?’

A tiny part of him died somewhere. Beautiful and sharp. Damn.

He chose his words carefully and worked hard not to smile. ‘How did you come to be up there?’

‘I stopped for…’ Her unlined brow creased just slightly. ‘There were about a dozen of them, coming out in front of me.’

He nudged the nearest steer with his hip and then shoved into it harder until it shuffled to its right. Then he stepped into the breach and was that much closer to the stranded tourist.

She followed his progress from on high. It kind of suited her.

‘I got out to shoo them away.’

‘Why not just nudge through them with your vehicle?’

‘Because it’s a rental. And because I didn’t want to hurt them, just move them.’

Beautiful, sharp, but kind-hearted. His smile threatened again. ‘So how did you end up on the roof?’ He barely needed to even raise his voice now; he was that close to her car. Even the mob had stopped its keening to listen to the conversation.

‘They closed in behind me. I couldn’t get back round to my door. And then more came and I…just…’

Clambered up onto the hood and then the roof? Something caught his eye as he reached the front corner of the vehicle. He bent quickly and retrieved them. ‘These yours?’

The dainty heels hung from one of his crooked fingers.

‘Are they ruined? I kicked them off when I climbed up.’

‘Hard to know, ma’am.’

‘Oh.’

Her disappointment seemed genuine. ‘Expensive?’

She waved away that concern. ‘They were my lucky Louboutins.’

Get lucky more like it. He did his best not to imagine them on the end of those forever legs. ‘Not so lucky for them.’

He edged along the side of the car to pass the shoes up to her and she folded herself down easily to retrieve them.

She stayed squatted. ‘So…now what?’

‘I suggest you get comfortable, ma’am. I’ll start moving the steer back towards the fence.’

She glanced around them and frowned. ‘They don’t look so fierce from up here. I swear they were more aggressive before.’

‘Maybe they smelled your fear?’

She studied him, curiosity at the front of her big blue-green eyes, trying to decide whether he was serious. ‘Are you going to move them yourself?’

‘I’ll have Deputy help me until the men from the Double Bar C arrive.’

That got her attention. ‘These are Calhoun cows?’

‘Cattle.’

She pressed her lips together at his correction. ‘That’s where I was coming from. Calling on Jessica Calhoun. But she was out.’

He paused in his attempts at shoving through the steer and frowned. ‘Jess expecting you?’

‘What are you, their butler?’

Again with the sass. It wasn’t her best feature, but it did excite his blood just a hint. Weird how your body could hate something and want it all at the same time. Maybe that was a carryover from his years in the city. ‘I just figured I’d save you some time. Jess is more than out, she’s on her honeymoon.’

That took the wind from her sails. She sagged, visibly.

‘Sorry.’ He shrugged and then couldn’t help himself. He muttered before starting up on the steer-shoving again, ‘Would you like to leave your card?’

She sighed. ‘Okay, I’m sorry for the butler crack. You’re a police officer—I guess it’s your job to know everyone’s business, technically speaking.’

A pat with one hand and a slap on the way back through. With no small amount of pleasure in enlightening her, he pointed at his shoulder. ‘See these stars? That makes me county sheriff. Technically speaking.’

She blew at the loose strand of blond hair curling down in front of her left eye and carefully tucked it back into the tight braid hiding the rest of it from him. Working out whether to risk more sarcasm, perhaps?

She settled on disdain.

Good call. Women in cattle-infested waters…

‘Well, Sheriff, if your deputy could rouse himself to the task at hand maybe we can all get on with our day.’

That probably qualified as a peace offering where she came from.

He lifted his head and called loudly, ‘Deputy!’

One hundred and twenty pounds of pure hair and loyalty bounded out of his service vehicle and lumbered towards them. The cattle paid immediate attention and, as a body, began to stir.

‘Settle,’ he murmured. Deputy slowed and sat.

She spun back to look at him. ‘That’s your deputy?’

‘Yup.’

‘A dog?’

‘Dawg, actually.’

She stared. ‘Because this is Texas?’

‘Because it’s his name. Deputy Dawg. It would be disrespectful to call him anything else.’

‘And he’s trained to herd cows?’

He hid his laugh in the grunt of pushing past yet another stubborn steer. ‘Not really, but from where I’m standing beggars can’t be choosers—’ he made himself add some courtesy ‘—ma’am.’

She squatted onto her bottom and slid her feet down the back windscreen of the car. They easily made the trunk.

‘You have a point,’ she grudgingly agreed, then gestured to a particular spot in the fence hidden to him by the wall of steer. ‘The hole’s over there.’

But her concession wasn’t an apology and it wasn’t particularly gracious.

Just like that, he was thinking of New York again. And that sucked the humour plain out of him.

‘Thank you,’ he said, then turned and whistled for Deputy.

Every single cell in Ellie Patterson’s body shrivelled with mortification. Awful enough to be found like this, so absurdly helpless, but she’d been nothing but rude since the officer—sheriff—stopped to help her. As though it was somehow his fault that her day had gone so badly wrong.

Her whole week.

She shuddered in a deep breath and shoved the regret down hard where she kept all her other distracting feelings. Between the two of them, the sheriff and his…Deputy…were making fairly good work of the cows. They’d got the one closest to the hole in the fence turned around and encouraged it back through, but the rest weren’t exactly hurrying to follow. It wasn’t like picking up one lost duckling in Central Park and having the whole flock come scrambling after it.

The massive tricolour dog weaved easily between the forest of legs, keeping the cows’ attention firmly on it and away from her—a small blessing—but the sheriff was slapping the odd rump, whistling and cursing lightly at the animals in a way that was very…well…Texan.

He couldn’t have been more cowboy if he tried.

But there was a certain unconcerned confidence in his actions that was very appealing. This was not a man that would be caught dead cowering on the roof of his car.

Another animal lumbered through to the paddock it had come from and casually wandered off to eat some grass. Thirty others still surrounded her.

This was going to take some time.

Ellie relaxed on her unconventional perch and channelled her inner Alex—her easygoing baby sister—scratching around for the positives in the moment. Actually, the Texan sun was pleasant once the drama of the past couple of hours had passed and once someone else was taking responsibility for the cows. And there were worse ways to pass the time than watching a good-looking man build up a sweat.

‘Sure you don’t want to come down here and help now that you’ve seen how docile they are?’ the man in question called.

Docile? They’d nearly trampled her earlier. Sort of. Getting friendly with the wildlife was not the reason she drove all this way to Texas.

Not that she’d really thought through any part of this visit.

Two days ago she’d burst out of the building her family owned, fresh from the devil of all showdowns with her mother in which she’d hurled words like hypocrite and liar at the woman who’d given her life. In about as much emotional pain as she could ever remember being.

Two hours and a lot of hastily dropped gratuities later, she was on the I-78 in a little white rental heading south.

Destination: Texas.

‘Very sure, thank you, Sheriff. You were clearly born for this.’

He seemed to stiffen but it was only momentary. If she got lucky, country cowboys—even ones in uniform—had dulled sarcasm receptors.

‘So…Jess just got married?’ she called to fill the suddenly awkward silence. Back home there was seldom any silence long enough to become awkward.

‘Yep.’ He slapped another rump and sent a cow forward. ‘You said you know the Calhouns?’

I think I am one. Wouldn’t that put a tilt in his hat and a heap more lines in his good ol’ Texan brow.

‘I… Yes. Sort of.’

He did as good a job of the head tilt as his giant dog. ‘Didn’t realise knowing someone or not was a matter of degrees.’

It really was poor on her part that two straight days on the road and she hadn’t really thought about how she was going to answer these kinds of questions. But she hadn’t worked the top parties of New York only to fall apart the moment a stranger asked a few pointed questions.

She pulled herself together. ‘I’m expected, but I’m…early.’ Cough. A couple of months early. ‘I wasn’t aware of Jessica’s plans.’

They fell to silence again. Then he busied himself with more cows. They were starting to move more easily now that their volume had reduced on this side of the wire, inversely proportional to the effort the sheriff was putting in. His movements were slowing and his breath came faster. But every move spoke of strength and resilience.

‘Your timing is off,’ he puffed between heaving cows. ‘Holt’s away, too, right now and Meg’s away at college. Nate’s still on tour.’

Her chest squeezed. Two brothers and two sisters? Just like that, her family doubled. But she struggled to hide the impact his simple words had. ‘Tour? Rock star or military?’

He slowly turned and stared right at her as if she’d insulted him. ‘Military.’

Clipped and deep. Maybe she had offended him? His accent was there but nowhere near as pronounced as the young cowboy she’d met out at the Calhoun ranch who told her in his thick drawl that Jess wasn’t home. Least that’s what she’d thought he’d said. She wasn’t fluent in deep Texan.

The animals seemed to realise there were now many more of them inside the field than outside it and they began to drift back through the fence to the safety of their numbers. It wasn’t quick, but it was movement. And it was in the right direction.

The sheriff whistled and his dog immediately came back to his side. They both stood, panting, by her rental’s tailpipe and watched the dawdling migration.

‘He’s well trained,’ Ellie commented from her position above the sheriff’s shoulder, searching for something to say.

‘It was part of our deal,’ he answered cryptically. Then he turned and thrust his hand up towards her. ‘County Sheriff Jerry Jackson.’

Ellie made herself ignore how many cow rumps that hand had been slapping only moments before. They weren’t vermin, just…living suede. His fingers were warm as they pressed into hers, his shake firm but not crippling. She tried hard not to stiffen.

‘Jed,’ he modified.

‘Sheriff.’ She smiled and nodded as though she was in a top-class restaurant and not perched on the back of a car surrounded by rogue livestock.

‘And you are…?’

Trying not to tell you, she realised, not entirely sure why. For the first time it dawned on her that she’d be a nobody here. Not a socialite. Not a performer. Not a Patterson.

No responsibilities. No expectations.

Opportunity rolled out before her bright and shiny and warmed her from the inside. But then she remembered she’d never be able to escape who she was—even if she wasn’t in fact who she’d thought she was for the past thirty years.

‘Ellie.’ She almost said Eleanor, the name she was known by in Manhattan, but at the last moment she used the name Alex called her. ‘Ellie Patterson.’

‘Where are you staying, Ellie?’

His body language was relaxed and he had the ultimate vouch pinned high on his chest—a big silver star. There was no reason in the world that she should be bristling at his courteous questions and yet…she was.

‘Are you just making conversation or is that professional interest?’

His polite smile died before it formed fully. He turned up to face her front-on. ‘The Calhouns are friends of mine and you’re a friend of theirs…’ Though the speculation in his voice told her he really wasn’t convinced of that yet. ‘It would be wrong of me to send you on your way without extending you some country courtesy in their place.’

It was credible. This was Texas, after all. But trusting had never come easy to her. And neither had admitting she wasn’t fully on top of everything. In New York, that was just assumed.

She was Eleanor.

And she’d assumed she’d be welcomed with open arms at the Calhoun ranch. ‘I’m sure I’ll find a place in town…’

‘Ordinarily I’d agree with you,’ he said. ‘But the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce is having their annual convention in town this week so our motel and bed and breakfasts are pretty maxed out. You might have a bit of trouble.’

Embarrassed heat flooded up her back. Accommodation was a pretty basic thing to overlook. She called on her fundraising persona—the one that had served her so well in the ballrooms of New York—and brushed his warning off. ‘I’m sure I’ll find something.’

‘You could try Nan’s Bunk’n’Grill back on I-38, but it’s a fair haul from here.’ He paused, maybe regretting his hospitality in the face of her bland expression. ‘Or the Alamo, right here in town, can accommodate a single. It’s vacant right now but that could change any time.’

Having someone organise her didn’t sit well, particularly since she’d failed abysmally to organise herself. If she had to, she’d drive all the way to Austin to avoid having to accept the condescension of strangers.

‘Thanks for the concern, Sheriff, but I’ll be fine.’ Her words practically crunched with stiffness.

He studied her from behind reflective sunglasses, until a throat gurgle from Deputy got his attention. He turned and looked back up the dirt road where a dust stream had appeared.

‘That’s Calhoun men,’ he said simply. ‘They’ll deal with the rest of the steer and repair the fence.’

Instant panic hit her. If they were Calhoun employees, then they were her employees. She absolutely didn’t want their first impression of her to be like this, cowering and ridiculous on the rooftop of her car. What if they remembered it when they found out who she was? She started to slide off.

Without asking, he stretched up over the trunk and caught her around the waist to help her dismount. Her bare feet touched softly down onto the cow-compacted earth and she stumbled against him harder than was polite.

Or bearable.

She used the moment of steadying herself as an excuse to push some urgent distance between them but he stayed close, towering over her and keeping the last curious cows back. A moment later, a truck pulled up and a handful of cowboys leapt off the tray and launched into immediate action. That gave her the time she needed to slip her heels back on and slide back into the rental.

She was Eleanor Patterson. Unflappable. Capable. Confident.

Once inside, she lowered her window and smiled her best New York dazzler out at him. ‘Thank you, Sheriff—’

‘Jed.’

‘—for everything. I’ll know better than to get out in the middle of a stampede next time.’

And just as she was feeling supremely on top of things again, he reached through her open window and brushed his fingers against her braided hair and retrieved a single piece of straw.

Her chest sucked in just as all the air in her body puffed out and she couldn’t help the flinch from his large, tanned fingers.

No one touched her hair.

No one.

She faked fumbling for her keys and it effectively brushed his hand away. But it didn’t do a thing to diminish the temporary warmth his brief touch had caused. Its lingering compounded her confusion.

But he didn’t miss her knee-jerk reaction. His lips tightened and Ellie wished he’d take the sunglasses off so she could see his eyes. For just a moment. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and pushed away her hormones’ sudden interest in Sheriff Jerry Jackson.

‘Welcome to Larkville, Ms. Patterson,’ he rumbled, deep and low.

Larkville. Really, shouldn’t a town with a name like that have better news to offer? A town full of levity and pratfalls, not secrets and heartbreak.

But she had to find out.

Either Cedric Patterson was her father…or he wasn’t.

And if he wasn’t—her stomach curled in on itself—what the hell was she going to do?

She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you again, Sheriff.’

‘Remember…the Alamo.’

The timing was too good. Despite all her exhaustion and uncertainty, despite everything that had torn her world wide open this past week, laughter suddenly wanted to tumble out into the midday air.

She resisted it, holding the unfamiliar sensation to herself instead.

She started her rental.

She put it in gear.

Funny how she had to force herself to drive off.




CHAPTER TWO


LARKVILLE was lovely. Larkville was kind. Larkville was extremely interested in who she was and why she’d come and clearly disappointed by her not sharing. But no one in the small, old Texas town had been able to find a bed for her. Despite their honest best efforts.

Remember the Alamo…

Sheriff Jackson’s voice had wafted uninvited through her head a few times in the afternoon since her sojourn with the cows but—for reasons she was still trying to figure out—she didn’t want to take his advice. The Alamo might be a charming B & B run by the most delightful old Texan grandmother with handmade quilts, but she’d developed an almost pathological resistance to the idea of driving across town to check it out.

Although three others had suggested she try there.

Instead she’d steadfastly ignored the pressing nature of her lack of accommodation and she’d lost herself in Larkville’s loveliest antique and craft shops as the sun crawled across the sky. She’d had half a nut-bread sandwich for a late lunch in the town’s pretty monument square. She’d grabbed a few pictures on her phone.

None of which would help her when the sun set and she had nowhere to go but back to New York.

No. Not going to happen.

She’d sleep in her car before doing that. She had a credit card full of funds, a heart full of regrets back in New York and a possible sister to meet in Texas. She turned her head to the west and stared off in the direction of the Alamo and tuned in to the confusion roiling in her usually uncluttered mind.

She didn’t want to discover that Texan grandmother had room for one more. She didn’t want Sheriff Jed Jackson to be right.

Because his being right about that might cast a different light on other decisions she’d made about coming here. About keeping Jessica Calhoun’s extraordinary letter secret from everyone but her mother. From her siblings. From her twin—the other Patterson so immediately affected. Maybe more so than her because Matt was their father’s heir.

She drew in a soft breath.

Or maybe he wasn’t, now.

Dread washed through her. Poor Matt. How lost was he going to be when he found out? The two of them might have lost the closeness they’d enjoyed as children but he was still her twin. They’d spent nine months entwined and embracing in their mother’s womb. Now they’d be lucky to speak to each other once in that time.

She didn’t always like Matt but she absolutely loved him.

She owed it to him, if not herself, to find out the truth. To protect him from it, if it was lies, and to break it to him gently if it wasn’t.

A sigh shuddered through her.

It wasn’t. Deep down Ellie knew that. Her mother’s carefully schooled candor slammed the door on the last bit of hope she’d had that Jessica Calhoun had mixed her up with someone else.

Of their own accord, her feet started taking her back towards her car, back towards the one last hope she had of staying in Larkville. Back towards her vision of kindly grandmothers, open stoves and steaming pots full of home-cooked soup.

Back to the Alamo.

There were worse places to wait out a few days.

‘Well, well…’

Ellie’s shock was as much for the fact that the big, solid door opened to a big, solid man as it was for the fact that County Sheriff Jed Jackson had no reason to wear his sunglasses disguise indoors.

For a man so large, she wasn’t expecting eyes like this. As pale as his faded tan T-shirt, framed by low, dark eyebrows and fringed with long lashes. His brown hair was dishevelled when not covered by a hat, flecked with grey and his five-o’clock shadow was right on time.

Coherent thoughts scattered on the evening breeze and all she could do was stare into those amazing eyes.

He slid one long arm up the doorframe and leaned casually into it. It only made him seem larger. ‘I thought you’d have gone with Nan’s Bunk’n’Grill out of sheer stubbornness,’ he murmured.

Ellie tried to see past him, looking for signs of the hand-hewn craft and that pot of soup she’d convinced herself would be waiting. ‘You’re staying here?’

No wonder the tourists of Larkville couldn’t find a place to sleep if the locals took up all the rooms.

His dark brows dipped. ‘I live here.’

She heard his words but her brain just wouldn’t compute. It was still completely zazzled by those eyes and by the butterfly beating its way out of her heart. ‘In a B & B?’

‘This is my house.’

Oh.

She stepped back to look at the number above the door. Seriously, how had she made it to thirty in one piece?

‘You have the right place, Ellie.’ Ellie. It sounded so much better in his voice. More like a breath than a word. ‘This is the Alamo.’

‘I can’t stay with you!’ And just like that her social skills fluttered off after her sense on the stiff breeze.

But Texans had thick hides, apparently, because he only smiled. ‘I rent out the room at the back.’ And then, when her feet didn’t move, he added, ‘It’s fully self-contained.’ And when she still didn’t move… ‘Ellie, I’m the sheriff. You’ll be fine.’

Desperation warred with disappointment and more than a little unease. There was no lovely Texan nana preparing soup for her, but he was offering a private—warm, as her skin prickled up again at the wind’s caress—place to spend the night, and she’d be his customer so she’d set the boundaries for their dealings with each other.

Though if her galloping heart was any indication that wasn’t necessarily advisable.

‘Can I see it?’

His smile twisted and took her insides with it. ‘I’d wager you wouldn’t be here if you’d found so much as an empty washroom. Just take it. It’s clean and comfortable.’

And just meters from you…

She tossed her hair back and met his gaze. ‘I’d like to see it, please.’

He inclined his head and stepped out onto the porch, crowding her back against a soft-looking Texan outdoor setting. She dropped her eyes. The house’s comforting warmth disappeared as he pulled the door closed behind him and she rubbed her hands along her bare, slim arms. This cotton blouse was one of her girliest, and prettiest, and she’d been pathetically keen to make a good impression on Jessica Calhoun.

She hadn’t really imagined still being outdoors in it as the sun set behind the Texan hills.

She followed him off the porch, around the side of the house and down a long pathway between his stone house and the neighbors’.

It was hard not to be distracted by the view.

Her fingers trailed along the stonework walls as they reached the end of the path. Jed reached up and snaffled a key from the doorframe.

‘Pretty poor security for a county sheriff.’ Or was it actually true what they said about small-town America? She couldn’t imagine living anywhere you didn’t have double deadlocks and movement sensors.

As he pushed the timber door open, he grunted. ‘I figure anyone breaking in is probably only in need of somewhere safe to spend the night.’

‘What if they trash the place?’

He turned and stared at her. ‘Where are you from?’

The unease returned and, until then, she hadn’t noticed it had dissipated. She stiffened her spine against it. ‘New York.’

He nodded as if congratulating himself on his instincts. He looked like he wanted to say something else but finally settled on, ‘Larkville is nothing like the city.’

‘Clearly.’ She couldn’t help the mutter. Manhattan didn’t produce men like this one.

She shut that thought down hard and followed him into the darkened room and stared around her as he switched on the lights. It was smaller than her own bathroom back home, but somehow he’d squeezed everything anyone would need for a comfortable night into it. A thick, masculine sofa draped in patchwork throws, a small two-person timber table that looked like it might once have been part of a forge, a rustic kitchenette. And upstairs, in what must once have been a hayloft…

She moved quickly up the stairs.

Bright, woven rugs crisscrossed a ridiculously comfortable-looking bed. The exhaustion of the past week suddenly made its presence felt.

‘They’re handcrafted by the people native to this area,’ he said. ‘Amazingly warm.’

‘They look it. They suit the room.’

‘This was the original barn on the back of the building back in 1885.’

‘It’s…’ So perfect. So amazing. ‘It looks very comfortable.’

He looked down on her in the warm timber surrounds of the loft bedroom. The low roof line only served to make him seem more of a giant crowded into the tiny space.

She regretted coming up here instantly.

‘It is. I lived here for months when my place was being renovated.’

She was distracted by the thought that she’d be sleeping in Sheriff Jed Jackson’s bed tonight, but she stumbled out the first response that came to her. ‘But it’s so small….’

His lips tightened immediately. ‘Size isn’t everything, Ms. Patterson.’

What happened to ‘Ellie’? He turned and negotiated his descent quickly and she hurried after him, hating the fact that she was hurrying. She forced her feet to slow. ‘This will be very nice, Sheriff, thank you.’

He turned and stared directly at her. ‘Jed. I’m not the sheriff when I’m out of uniform.’

Great. And now she was imagining him out of uniform.

Unfamiliar panic set in as her mind warmed to the topic. It was an instant flashback to her childhood when she’d struggled so hard to be mature and collected in the company of her parents’ sophisticated friends, and feared she’d failed miserably. Back then she had other methods of controlling her body; now, she just folded her manicured nails into her palm and concentrated on how they felt digging into her flesh.

Hard enough to distract, soft enough not to scar.

It did vaguely occur to her that maybe she’d just swapped one self-harm for another.

‘You haven’t asked the price,’ he said.

‘Price isn’t an issue.’ She cringed at how superior it sounded here—standing in a barn, out of context of the Patterson billions.

His stare went on a tiny bit too long to be polite. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’

Silence fell.

Limped on.

And then they both chose the exact same moment to break it.

‘I’ll get a fire started—’

‘I’ll just get my bags—’

She opened the door to the pathway and the icy air from outside streamed in and stopped her dead.

A hard body stepped past her. ‘I’ll get your bags, you stay in the warm.’

His tone said he’d rather she froze to death, but his country courtesy wouldn’t let that happen.

‘But I—’

He didn’t even bother turning around. ‘You can get the fire going if you want to be useful.’

And then he closed the door in her face.

Useful. The magic word. If there was one thing Eleanor Patterson was, it was useful. Capable. A doer. Nothing she couldn’t master.

She took a deep breath, turned from the timber door just inches from her face and stared at the small, freestanding wood fire and the basket of timber next to it, releasing her breath slowly.

Nothing she couldn’t master…

The night air was as good as a cold shower. Jed’s body had begun humming the moment he opened his door to Ellie Patterson, and tailing those jeans up the steep steps to the loft hadn’t reduced it. He had to work hard not to imagine himself throwing the Comanche blankets aside and plumping up the quilt so she could stretch her supermodel limbs out on it and sleep.

Sleep. Yeah, that’s what he was throwing the blankets aside for.

Pervert.

She was now his tenant and she was a visitor to one of the towns under his authority, a guest of the Calhouns. Ellie Patterson and feather quilts had no place in his imagination. Together or apart.

She just needed a place to stay and he had one sitting there going to waste. He’d dressed it up real nice on arrival in Larkville and had left the whole place pretty much intact—a few extra girlie touches for his gram when she came to visit, but otherwise the same as when he’d used it.

It might not be to New York standards—especially for a woman who didn’t need to ask the price of a room—but she’d have no complaints. No reasonable ones anyway. It was insulated, sealed and furnished, and it smelled good.

Not as good as Ellie Patterson did, but good enough.

He opened her unlocked car to pop the trunk.

He’d watched her rental trundle off down the long, straight road from the Calhoun ranch until it disappeared against the sky, and he’d wondered if he would see her again. Logic said yes; it was a small town. His heart said no, not a good idea.

The last person on this planet he needed to get mixed up with was a woman from New York City. That was just way too close to things he’d walked away from.

And yet, he’d found himself volunteering the Alamo in her moment of need, the manners his gram raised him with defying his better judgement. He’d been almost relieved when she so curtly declined his help.

As he swung her cases—plural—out of the rental’s trunk, he heard the unmistakable sound of Deputy protesting. A ten-second detour put him at his front door.

‘Sorry, boy, got distracted. Come on out.’

Deputy looked about as ticked off as a dog used to the sole attention of his owner possibly could, but he was a fast forgiver and barrelled down the porch steps and pathway ahead of Ellie’s cases.

In the half second it took to push the door to the old barn open, he and Deputy both saw the same thing. Ellie, legs spread either side of the little stove, hands and face smudged with soot, a burning twig in her hand. He only wanted to dash to her side and wipe clean that porcelain skin. Deputy actually did it. With his tongue.

Ellie gasped.

Jed barked a stiff, ‘Heel! ’

Deputy slunk back to his master’s right boot and dropped his head, sorry but not sorry. Ellie scrabbled to her feet, sputtering. There was nothing for him to do apart from apologise for his dog’s manners and place her suitcases through the door.

As if he hadn’t come off as enough of a hick already.

Then his eyes fell on the work of modern art poking out of the fireplace. He stepped closer.

‘I’ve never made a fire.’

He struggled not to soften at the self-conscious note in her voice. It was good to know she could drop the self-possession for a moment, but he wasn’t buying for one moment that it was permanent. Ms. Ellie Patterson might be pretty in pastels but he’d wager his future she was tough as nails beneath it.

He didn’t take his eyes off the amazing feat of overengineering. An entire log was jammed in there with twigs and twisted newspaper and no less than four fire-starters. And she’d been about to set the whole lot ablaze.

He relieved her of the burning twig and extinguished it. ‘That would have burned down the barn.’

She looked horrified. ‘Oh. Really?’

Deputy dropped to his side on the rug closest to the fire, as though it was already blazing.

Dopey dog.

‘Less is more with fires….’ Without thinking he took her hand and walked her to the sofa, then pressed her into it. He did his best not to care that she locked up like an antique firearm at his uninvited touch. ‘Watch and learn.’

It took him a good five minutes to undo the nest of twigs and kindling squashed inside the wrought-iron fireplace. But then it was a quick job to build a proper fire and get it crackling. She watched him intently.

He stood. ‘Got it?’

Her colour surged and it wasn’t from the growing flames. ‘I’m sorry. You must think me so incredibly inept. First the cows and now the fire.’

He looked down on her, embarrassed and poised on his sofa. ‘Well, I figure you don’t have a lot of either in Manhattan.’

‘We have a fireplace,’ she started without thinking, and then her words tapered off. ‘But we light it with a button.’

Well, that was one step better than ‘but we have staff to do it for us.’ Maybe she knew what she was talking about when she teased him about being the Calhouns’ butler.

‘I’m sure there’s a hundred things you can do that I can’t. One day you can teach me one of those and we’ll be even.’

Her blue eyes glittered much greener against the glow of the growing fire. ‘Not sure you’d have much use for the intricacies of delivering a sauté in arabesque.’

‘You’re a chef?’

His confusion at least brought a glint of humour back to her beautiful face. ‘Sauté onstage, not on the stove. I’m a dancer. Ballet. Or…I was.’

‘That explains so much.’ Her poise. The way she held herself. Those amazing legs. Her long, toned frame. Skinny, but not everywhere.

The lightness in her expression completely evaporated and he could have kicked himself for letting his eyes follow his thoughts. ‘What I mean is it doesn’t surprise me. You move like a professional.’ Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Dancer, I mean.’

Deputy shot him a look full of scorn: way to keep digging, buddy!

But as he watched, the awkwardness leached from Ellie’s fine features and her lips turned up. The eyes that met his were amused. And more than a little bit sexy. ‘Thank you, Jed. I’m feeling much less self-conscious now.’

So was he—stupidly—now that she’d used his name.

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, then… I’ll just leave you to unpack.’ He glanced at the fire. ‘As soon as those branches are well alight you can drop that log on top. Just one,’ he cautioned, remembering her overpacked first effort. ‘As long as you keep the vent tight it should last awhile. Put a big one on just before you go to bed and it should see you through the night.’

‘I’ll do that now, then, because as soon as you’re gone I’m crawling into bed.’

‘At 7:00 p.m.?’ Why was she so exhausted? It couldn’t just be the steer, even for a city slicker.

She pushed to her feet to show him the door. ‘I think my week is finally catching up to me. But I’m going to be very comfortable here, thank you for the hospitality. You’ve done your hometown proud.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her Larkville wasn’t his hometown, but she didn’t say it to start a conversation, she said it to end one.

He moved to the door, surprised at how his own feet dragged, and whistled for Deputy. ‘Sleep well, Ellie.’

His buddy hauled himself to his feet and paused in front of Ellie for the obligatory farewell scratch. She just stared at him, no clue what he was expecting, but then his patient upward stare seemed to encourage her and she slid her elegant fingers into his coat and gave him a tentative rub. She released him, and Deputy padded to Jed’s side and preceded him out the door.

Jed stared after the dog, an irrational envy blazing away as she closed the door behind him. He pulled the collar of his shirt up against the air’s bite and hurried back to his house. It was ridiculous to hold it against a dog just because he’d been free to walk up and demand she touch him. Her sliding down his body earlier today was a heck of a lot more gratuitous than what just happened in the barn.

Yet… The way her fingers had curled in his dog’s thick black coat… Her eyes barely staying open. It was somehow more…intimate.

Deputy reached the street first, then paused and looked back at him, a particularly smug expression on his hairy black, tan and white face.

‘Jerk,’ Jed muttered.

Who or what Ellie Patterson touched was no concern of his. She was the last kind of woman he needed to be staking a claim on, and the last kind to tolerate it.

But as he put foot after foot up that long pathway towards his dog, he’d never, in his life, felt more like rushing back in there and branding his name on someone—preferably with his lips—so everyone in Larkville knew where Ellie Patterson was coming home to at night.

Stupid, because the woman was as prickly as the cactus out on the borderlands. Stupid because she lived in New York and he lived in small-town Texas. Stupid because he wasn’t interested in a relationship. Now or ever.

He turned and stared at her door.

But it wouldn’t be the first stupid thing he’d done in his life.

Deputy looked at him with disgust and then turned back to the front door of the cottage and waited for someone with opposable thumbs to make it open.

Not half the look Ellie would give him if she got even the slightest inkling of his caveman thoughts. This was just his testosterone speaking, pure and simple.

Men like him didn’t belong with women like her. Women like Ellie Patterson belonged with driven, successful investment bankers who made and lost millions on Wall Street. Men like him belonged with nice, country girls who were happy to love him warts and all. There was no shortage of nice women in Hayes County and a handful had made their interest—and their willingness—clearly known since he arrived in Larkville. And right after that he’d made it his rule not to date where he worked.

Don’t poop where you eat, Jeddie, his gram used to say, though she generally referenced it when she was trying to encourage him to clean his room. But it was good advice.

His gut curled.

He’d ignored it once and he’d screwed everything up royally. Sticking faithfully to this rule had seen him avoid any messy entanglements that threatened his job or his peace of mind ever since he’d arrived in Larkville three years ago.

But abstinence had a way of creeping up on you. Every week he went without someone in his life was a week he grew more determined to only break it for something special. Someone special. That bar just kept on rising. To the point that he wondered how special a woman would have to be to meet it.

Deputy lifted his big head and threw him a look as forlorn as he felt. It was exactly what he needed to snap him out of the sorry place he’d wound up. He flung himself down onto the sofa, reached for the TV remote and found himself a sports channel.

In the absence of any other kind of stimulation, verbally sparring with an uptight city girl might just be as close to flirting as he needed to get.

If she didn’t deck him for trying.




CHAPTER THREE


GIVEN how many five-star hotels Ellie had stayed in, it was ridiculous to think that she’d just had one of the best sleeps of her life in a converted hayloft.

She burrowed down deeper into the soft quilt and took herself through the pros and cons of just sleeping all day.

Pro: she wasn’t expected anywhere.

Pro: she wouldn’t be missed by anyone. No one would know but her; and possibly the sheriff, although he’d almost certainly be out doing sheriffly duties.

When was the last time she just lay in? While all her classmates were keeping teenage hours, she’d spent every waking moment perfecting her steps, or doing strength training or studying the masters. Even when she was sick she used to force herself up, find something constructive to do. Anything that meant she wasn’t indulging her body.

Now look at her. Twelve hours’ rest behind her and quite prepared to go back for another three.

What had she become?

Her deep, powerful desire to pull the blankets over her head and never come out was only beaten by the strength of her determination not to. She hurled back the toasty warm covers and let the bracing Texan morning in with her, and her near-naked flesh protested with a thousand tiny bumps. Even the biggest log she’d found in the woodpile couldn’t last this long and so the little room was as cold as…well, an old barn. Bad enough that she’d broken a cardinal rule and gone to bed without eating anything, she’d stripped out of her clothes and just crawled into bed in panties only, too tired to even forage amongst her belongings for her pajamas.

More sloth!

She pulled one of the blankets up around her shoulders and tiptoed over to her suitcases, the timber floor of the raised loft creaking under her slight weight. The sound reminded her of the flex and give in the dance floor of the rehearsal studio and brought a long-distance kind of comfort. They may have been hard years but they were also her childhood. She rummaged to the bottom of one case for socks and a T-shirt and dragged them on, then slid into her jeans from yesterday, her loose hair caressing her face.

No doubt, the people of Larkville had been up before dawn—doing whatever it was that country folk did until the sun came up. There was no good reason she shouldn’t be up, too. She looped a scrunchie over her wrist, pulled the bedspread into tidy order, surrendered her toasty blanket and laid it neatly back where it belonged, then turned for the steps.

Downstairs didn’t have the benefit of rising heat and it had the decided non-benefit of original old-brick flooring so it was even chillier than the loft. It wasn’t worth going to all the trouble of lighting the fire for the few short hours until it got Texas warm. Right behind that she realised she had no idea what the day’s weather would bring. Back home, she’d step out onto her balcony and look out over the skyline to guess what kind of conditions Manhattan was in for, but here she’d have to sprint out onto the pavement where she could look up into the sky and take a stab at what the day had in store.

She pulled on the runners she’d left by the sofa, started to shape her hair into a ponytail, hauled open the big timber door…and just about tripped over the uniformed man crouched there leaving a box on her doorstep.

‘Oh—!’

Two pale eyes looked as startled as she felt and the sheriff caught her before momentum flipped her clean over him. All at once she became aware of two things: first, she wasn’t fully dressed and, worse, her hair was still flying loose.

Having actual breasts after so many years of not having them at all was still hard to get used to and slipping them into lace was never the first thing she did in the morning. Not that what she had now would be of much interest to any but the most pubescent of boys but she still didn’t want them pointing at Sheriff Jed Jackson in the frosty morning air.

But even more urgent… Her hair was down.

Ellie steadied herself on Jed’s shoulders as he straightened and she stepped back into the barn, tucking herself more modestly behind its door. She abandoned her discomfort about her lack of proper clothing in favour of hauling her hair into a quick bunch and twisting the scrunchie around it three brutal times. That unfortunately served to thrust her chest more obviously in the sheriff’s direction but if it was a choice between her unashamedly frost-tightened nipples and her still-recovering hair, she’d opt for the eyeful any day.

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 enough with the lives of others for one lifetime.

His finger connected with the activation switch and a sequenced flash of red and blue lit the waking streets.

Time to get to work.




CHAPTER FOUR


ELLIE pulled her knees up closer to her chest, cupped her chamomile tea and listened to the sounds of the storm raging over Larkville. The awesome power of nature always soothed her, when the noise from the heavens outgunned the busy, conflicting noise inside her head—the clamoring expectations, her secret fears, the voice telling her how much better she should be doing.

The sky’s thundering downpour was closer to mental silence than anything she could ever create.

Her eyes drifted open.

The crackle of the roasting fire was muted beneath the rain hammering on the barn’s tin roof but its orange glow flickered out across the darkened room, dancing. The flames writhed and twisted in the inferno of the stove, elegant and pure, the way the best of the performers in her company had been able to do.

The way she never had. Despite everything she’d done to be good enough, despite sacrificing her entire childhood to the God of Dance. Her entire body.

One particularly spectacular flame twisted in a helix and reached high above the burning timber before folding and darting back into itself.

Still her body yearned to move like those flames. It craved the freedom and raw expression. She hadn’t really danced in the nine years since walking away from the corps and the truth was she hadn’t really danced in the twelve years before it. The regimented structure of ballet suited her linear mind. Steps, sequences, choreographed verse. She’d excelled technically but, ultimately, lacked heart.

And then she’d discovered that one of her father’s corporations was a silent patron for the company, and what heart she had for dance withered completely.

The place she thought she’d earned with brutal hard work and commitment to her craft… The place she knew two dozen desperate artists would crawl over her rotting corpse to have…

Her father had bought that place with cold, hard cash.

Two air pockets crashed together right overhead and the little barn rattled at the percussion. Ellie didn’t even flinch. She shifted against the sofa cushions to dislodge the old pain of memory. She’d run from that chapter in her life with a soul as gaunt as her body, searching for something more meaningful to take its place. But she didn’t find it in the thousands of hours of charity work she put in over the past decade raising funds for Alzheimer’s research. And she didn’t find it in the company of some man. No matter how many she’d dated to appease her mother.

And—finally—she opened her eyes one morning and realised that her inability to find something meaningful in her life said a whole lot more about her than it did about the city she lived in.

The rolling thunder morphed into the rhythmic pounding of a fist on her door, though it took a few moments for Ellie to realise. She tossed back the blanket and hurried the few steps to the front door, taking a moment to make sure her hair was neatly back.

‘Are you okay?’

The sheriff stood there, water streaming off his wide-brimmed hat and three-quarter slicker, soaked through from the knee down. A bedraggled Deputy shadowed him.

Surprise had her stumbling backwards and man and dog took that as an invitation to enter. They stepped just inside her door, out of the steady rain, though Jed took off his hat and left it hanging on the external doorknob. He produced a small, yellow box.

‘Matches?’ she said, her tranquil haze making her slow to connect the dots.

‘There’s candles in the bottom kitchen drawer.’

‘What for?’

He looked at her like she was infirm. ‘Light.’ Then he flicked her light switch up and down a few times. ‘Power’s out.’

‘Oh. I didn’t notice. I had the lights out anyway.’

Maybe people didn’t do that in Texas because the look he threw her was baffled. ‘You were sitting here in the dark?’

Was that truly so strange? She rather liked the dark. ‘I was sitting here staring into the fire and enjoying the storm.’

‘Enjoying it?’ The idea seemed to appall him. He did look like he’d been through the wringer, though not thoroughly enough to stop water dripping from his trousers onto the brick floor of the old barn.

‘I’m curled up safe and sound on your sofa, not out there getting saturated.’ He still didn’t seem to understand so she made it simpler. ‘I like storms.’

Deputy slouched down in front of her blazing fire and his big black eyes flicked between the two of them. Jed’s hand and the matchbox still hung out there in space, so Ellie took it from him and placed it gently next to the existing one on the woodpile. ‘Thank you, Sheriff. Would you like a coffee? The pot’s just boiled.’

Colour soaked up Jed’s throat, though it was lessened by the orange glow coming from the stove. Had he forgotten his own woodpile came with matches?

‘Sorry. I thought you might be frightened.’

‘Of a storm…?’ Ellie swung the pot off its bracket and back onto her blazing stove, then set to spooning out instant coffee. ‘No.’

‘I’d only been home a few minutes when the power cut. I had visions of you trying to get down the stairs in the dark to find candles.’

Further evidence of his chivalry took second place to inexplicable concern that he’d been out there in the cold for hours. ‘Trouble?’

He shrugged out of his sheriff’s coat and draped it over the chairback closest to the heat. ‘The standard storm-related issues—flooding, downed trees. We’ve been that long without rain the earth is parched. Causes more run-off than usual.’

The kettle sang as it boiled and Ellie tumbled water into his coffee, then passed it to him. He took it gratefully. ‘Thank you.’

She sunk back into her spot on the sofa and he sat himself politely on the same chair as his dripping coat. Overhead, the storm grizzled and grumbled in rolling waves and sounded so much like a petulant child it was hard not to smile.

‘You really do love your weather, don’t you?’ he said.

‘I love…’ What? The way it was so completely out of her control and therefore liberating? No one could reasonably have expectations of the weather. ‘I love the freedom of a storm.’

He sipped his coffee and joined her in listening to the sounds above. ‘Can I ask you something?’ he finally said. ‘How did you know it was going to rain?’

She thought about that for a moment. Shrugged. ‘I could feel it.’

‘But you know nothing about Texas weather. And it was such a long shot.’

‘Intuition?’

He smiled in the flickering firelight. ‘You remind me a bit of someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Clay Calhoun.’

Her heart and stomach swapped positions for a few breaths.

‘Jessica’s father. That man was so in touch with his land he could look at the sky and tell you where a lightning bolt was going to hit earth.’

Awkwardness surged through her. Clay Calhoun was dead, just a legend now. Getting to know the man at the start of all her emotional chaos was not something she expected when she came to Texas. Yet, there was something intensely personal about discovering a shared…affinity…with the man that might be her father.

Was. She really needed to start digging her way out of denial and into reality. Her mother had virtually confirmed it with her bitter refusal to discuss it. And Jed had just reinforced it with his casual observation.

Maybe her weather thing was a case of nature, not nurture. Her Texan genes making their presence felt.

She cleared her throat. ‘Past tense?’

He shifted his legs around so that the heat from the stove could do as good a job drying his trouser bottoms as it was doing on his dog. ‘Yeah, Larkville lost Clay in October. Hit everyone real hard, especially his kids.’

Some harder than others.

He turned to look right at her. ‘I thought that might be why you were here. Given Jess’s recent loss. To bring condolences.’

‘I’m…’ This would be the perfect time to tell someone. Like confessing to a priest, a stranger. But for all she barely knew him, Jed Jackson didn’t feel entirely like a stranger. And so, ironically, it was easier to hedge. ‘No. I… Jess is helping me with…something.’

Wow… Eleanor Patterson totally tongue-tied. Rare. And exceedingly lame.

‘Well, whatever it is I hope it can wait a few weeks? Jess won’t be back until the end of the month, I hear.’

It had waited thirty years; it could wait a couple more weeks. ‘It can.’

He stood and turned his back on the fire to give the backs of his calves and boots a chance to dry off. A light steam rose from them. His new position meant he was five-eighths silhouette against the orange glow. Imposing and broad.

But as non-threatening as the storm.

‘Have you eaten?’ he suddenly asked, his silhouette head tilting down towards her.

Even after all these years she still had a moment of tension when anyone mentioned food. Back when she was sick it was second nature to avoid eating in public. ‘No. I was planning on having leftovers.’

Though her idea of leftovers was the other half of the apple she’d had at lunch.

‘Want to grab something at Gracie May’s?’ he asked, casually. ‘Best little diner in the county.’

The olive branch was unexpected and not entirely welcome. Was it a good idea to get friendly with the locals? Especially the gorgeous ones? ‘But you just got dry. And won’t her power be out, too?’

‘Right. Good point.’ He launched into action, turning for the kitchen. ‘I’ll fix us something here, then.’

‘Here?’ The delightful relaxation of her stormy evening fled on an anxious squeak.

He paused his tracks, cocked his head in a great impression of Deputy. ‘Unless you want to come next door to my place?’

How did he manage to invest just a few words with so much extra meaning? Did she want to go next door and sit down to a meal with Sheriff Jed Jackson? Surrounded by his cowboy stuff, his Texan trappings? His woodsy smell?

Yes.

‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘Here will be fine. Some guy delivered enough groceries for a month this morning.’

His smile did a good job of rivaling the fire’s glow and it echoed deep down inside her. He set about shaving thin slices of ham from the bone and thick slices of bread from the loaf. Then some crumbly cheese, a sliced apple and a wad of something preserved from a jar labelled Sandra’s Jellies and Jams.

‘Green-tomato jam. Calhouns’ finest.’

That distracted Ellie from the sinking of her stomach as he passed a full plate into her lap and sank down onto the other half of the suddenly shrunken sofa. She turned her interest up to him. ‘Sandra Calhoun?’

‘Jess, technically speaking, but a family recipe.’

Her family’s recipe. That never failed to feel weird. For so long her family had been in New York. She picked up her fork and slid some of the tomato jam onto the corner of the bread and then bit into it. If she was only going to get through a fifth of the food on her plate, then she wanted it to be Jess’s produce.

Jed was already three enormous bites into his sandwich and he tossed some ham offcuts over to Deputy, who roused himself long enough to gobble them up before flopping back down.

She risked conversation between his mouthfuls. ‘The Calhouns have quite a presence.’

‘They should. They’re Larkville’s founding family. Jess’s great-great-granddaddy put down roots here in 1856.’

‘And they’re…well respected?’

The look he threw her over his contented munching was speculative. ‘Very much so. Clay’s death hit the whole town hard. They’re dedicating the Fall Festival to him.’

‘Really? The whole thing?’

‘The Calhouns practically ran that festival anyway. Was fitting.’

‘Who’s running it now?’ With Sandra and Clay both gone, and all the kids away?

‘Jess and Holt will be back soon enough. Nate, too, God willing. Everyone else is pitching in to help.’

She filed that away for future reference. ‘What happens at a fall festival?’

He smiled. ‘You’d hate it. Livestock everywhere.’

Heat surged up her throat. ‘I don’t hate cows…’

‘I’m just teasing, relax. Candy corn, rides, crafts, hot-dog-eating competitions. Pretty much what happens at fall festivals all over the country.’

She stared at him.

His eyebrows rose. ‘Never?’

The heat threatened again. ‘I’ve never left New York.’

‘In your entire life?’

She shrugged, though she didn’t feel at all relaxed about the disbelief in his voice. ‘This is my first time.’

‘Summers?’

Her lips tightened. ‘Always rehearsing.’

‘Family vacations?’

‘We didn’t take them.’ The way he’d frozen with his sandwich halfway to his mouth got her back up. ‘And you did?’

‘Heck, yes. Every year my gram would throw me and her ducks in her old van and head off somewhere new.’

The ducks distracted her for a moment, but only a moment. ‘You lived with your grandmother?’

His eyes immediately dropped to his plate. He busied himself mopping up the last of the jam.

She’d grown up with Matt for a brother. She knew when to wield silence for maximum effect. Jed lasted about eight seconds.

‘My parents got pregnant young. Real young. Dad got custody after Mom took off. Gram was his mother. They raised me together.’

Mom took off. There was a lot of story missing in those few words. If only she didn’t respect her own privacy so much—it necessarily forced her to respect his. ‘But your dad wasn’t in the van with you and the ducks every summer?’

‘He worked a lot. And then he—’ Jed cleared his throat and followed it up with an apple-slice chaser ‘—he died when I was six.’

Oh. The charming cowboy suddenly took on an unexpected dimension. Losing your parent so young… And here she was whining about having too many parents. ‘That must have been tough for you to get over.’

‘Gram was a rock. And a country woman herself. She knew how to raise boys.’

‘Is she still here in Larkville?’

The eyes found hers again. ‘I’m not from Larkville, originally.’

‘Really?’ He seemed so much part of the furniture here. Of the earth. ‘I thought your accent wasn’t as pronounced as everyone else’s. Where are you from?’

‘Gram was from the Lehigh Valley. But my dad was NYPD. He met my mother while he was training.’

New York. Her world—and her hopes at anonymity—shrank. She moderated her breath just like in a heavy dance routine. ‘Manhattan?’

‘Queens, mostly. He commuted between shifts back out to the Valley. To us.’

‘And he’s the reason you became a cop?’

‘He’s part of it. He, uh, died on duty. That meant there was legacy funding for my schooling. It felt natural to go into law enforcement.’

Died on duty. But something much more immediate pressed down on her. ‘You studied in New York?’

His eyes hooded. ‘I lived and worked in Manhattan for fifteen years.’

Her voice grew tiny. ‘You didn’t say. When I told you where I was from.’

‘A lot of people come from New York. It’s not that remarkable.’

So she just asked him outright what she needed to know. ‘Do you know who I am?’

That surprised him. ‘Why? Are you famous?’

His cavalier brush while she was stressing out didn’t sit well with her. She took the chance to push her plate onto the footstool next to them. ‘Be serious.’

He stared at her. Doing the math. Consulting his mental Who’s Who of New York. She saw the exact moment that the penny dropped. ‘You’re a Patterson Patterson?’




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