Lawman's Redemption

After crossing the park alongside the courthouse, he walked half a block east to the sandwich shop. Eating alone in a restaurant was one of the hardest things he’d had to learn to do after his marriage ended. Even now, it didn’t come easily. Most days he went to the Dairy King for a burger and fries, and on really slow days he’d go home. Today, though, a quick sandwich seemed best.

He got a roast beef sandwich, a bag of chips and a soft drink, then headed for an empty table. Just as he set his tray down, he happened to glance at the woman sitting by herself at the next table, and for a moment he froze.

Hallie Madison gazed back at him. After a moment, she waggled her fingers in a wave.

“What are you doing here?” he asked brusquely.

“Having lunch.”

“You were supposed to go home yesterday.”

She shook her head. “My mother and my sisters left yesterday. I’m staying awhile.”

“How long?”

Wariness slipped into her expression. “Do you want to have this conversation from over there, or would you like to join me?”

It was a toss-up, he admitted sourly. He damn sure didn’t want the other diners to listen in, but he also didn’t want to share her table, not when he wasn’t sure he could look her in the eye. But he picked up the tray and moved it to her table, then slid onto the bench opposite her. First thing he did was bump her feet, then bang his knee on the table’s center leg.

“How long?” he asked again once he was settled.

“At least three weeks. I’m overseeing the construction on Neely and Reese’s house.”

Three weeks. Damn. He never would have gone near her or her motel Saturday night if he’d known that. He’d thought she was leaving. He’d thought he wouldn’t see her again. He’d thought…

His jaw tightened. He’d thought he would take what he wanted from her, then say goodbye and forget her.

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” he asked as he unwrapped his sandwich.

“When did you ask?”

She had him there. He’d known the other Madisons were leaving Sunday, and he’d assumed she was, too. That was his mistake, not hers.

She finished the last of her chips and stuffed her trash into the bag, then set it aside and rested her arms on the tabletop. “Look, Brady, you’re apparently concerned that I might expect something from you. I don’t. What we did…that’s all it was. Two nights. Nothing more. I imagine in a town like this, it will be impossible to avoid each other entirely, but we can try. If we fail and you do run into me, don’t feel you have to acknowledge me. I don’t expect that, either.”

She looked so cool, but her hazel eyes were a little too bright, the muscle in her jaw clenched a little too tight. Picking up her purse, she slid across the seat to leave, but he extended his leg, blocking her way.

“Don’t go. I didn’t mean— I just thought—”

When he didn’t go on, she finished for him. “That you would never have to see me again. I’m not yet as experienced at one-night stands as you are, but I do understand how they work. No strings, no commitment, no nothing once the night is over.”

It was illogical as hell, but he took offense at her assumption that he had some vast experience at sleeping with strangers, and he took even more offense at her use of the word yet. She was implying that one day she would be as experienced as he was—an idea that made his gut tighten. As if it were any of his business.

“It’s just that seeing you took me by surprise.” And he didn’t like surprises—never had. Most of his security came from controlling as much of his life as possible, probably because he hadn’t had any control to speak of until after his divorce. His job wasn’t predictable, but everything else in his life was, and he liked it that way.

Hallie was still poised to leave, stopped only by his size-twelve boot blocking her exit. He wished she would relax and stop looking at him as if he were the last person she wanted to see—which was only fair, since he’d made her feel as if she were the last person he wanted to see. “Sit with me while I eat,” he said, trying to sound friendly but doubtful he succeeded. “Please.”

After a moment, she moved back to the center of the bench and laid her purse aside. She sipped from her drink, then folded her arms across her chest. “Are you aware everyone in here is watching us?”

He didn’t bother to look. He could feel the curious stares. “I imagine they’re surprised.”

“By what?”

“The fact that you’re sitting here and we’re talking.” He scraped a pile of lettuce from his sandwich, then took a bite.

“People don’t sit with you?”

“Generally not. I don’t exactly invite friendly overtures.”

“Oh, gee, now there’s a surprise,” she said with a delicate little sniff, and then she simply watched him. Figuring turnabout was fair play, he fixed his own gaze on her. Her blond hair was pulled back in a fancy braid, and she wore a sleeveless yellow sweater with white shorts and sandals. Even so casually dressed, she looked like money, and a lot of it. Her nails were manicured and painted a deep rose, and her only jewelry was a wristwatch and earrings…and a stud nestled in her navel. He hadn’t seen it—had only felt it in the dark—so he didn’t know exactly what it was.

Besides sexy.

How many other men knew that about her?

An ex-husband or two. Probably a few others. She hadn’t said he was her only one-night stand.

“Tell me about your divorce,” he said as he picked up the second half of his sandwich.

“I got the house, the Mercedes and a nice cash settlement. He kept his fabulous career and got the girlfriend and all the friends.”

What girlfriend? he wanted to ask. At the moment he couldn’t imagine the woman a man would pick over her. “I guess I made the wrong request. Tell me about the marriage.”

“Which one?”

I’m a three-time loser, she’d said at the reception Saturday night, with more than a little bitter mocking. “The most recent one.”

After a moment’s silence, she shrugged. “His name was Max Parker. He’s a film producer. We were married four years and were—I thought—happily in love. But at my birthday party last winter, I went looking for him and found him boffing the star of his last movie. He needed someone who could arouse his passion, he said—someone who was…oh, gee, how did he put it?” She pretended to think, then scowled. “Oh, yeah. Someone who wasn’t as old as me.”

He thought about the things he could say. I’m sorry. That must have hurt. The guy’s a bastard. You’re better off without him. He settled for something a little less sympathetic. “You look pretty damn good for an old broad.”

For a moment she simply looked at him, her hazel eyes opened wide. Then slowly a smile curved the corners of her mouth, and he felt the first real warmth from her since he’d left her bed before dawn Sunday. “Thank you,” she said. Uncrossing her arms from her chest, she settled more comfortably on the bench. “What about yours?”

Now that she’d relaxed, Brady grew stiff, stilled in the act of gathering the sandwich wrapper and lettuce shreds. Turnabout was fair play, remember? But weren’t there limits to how many old habits a man could be expected to break all at once? He’d been in Reese’s wedding, had attended the party afterward, had turned his one night with Hallie into two and was sitting with her now in full view of anyone who cared to look. Every one of those things was new for him.

And keeping his past in the past—and private—was old. The oldest habit he had.

But she was waiting quietly, patiently, and for some unfathomable reason, he didn’t want to disappoint her.

“That’s a deep, dark secret around here,” he said at last.

“How deep? How dark?”

As she’d done, he pretended to need a moment to think about it. “Well, you’re the only person in Oklahoma who even knows I was married.”

“Of course, Neely and Reese aren’t in Oklahoma right—” She broke off when he shook his head. “They don’t know?”

He shook his head again.

“Then why did you tell me?”

“That’s a good question.” She’d been looking a little blue, her mother and Neely had trampled on her feelings, and she’d looked so wounded. He’d wanted… To let her know she wasn’t the only one who’d failed? That he understood at least something of what she felt?

“What happened?”

He had never discussed his marriage or his divorce with anyone—not once in fourteen years. There had been one oblique conversation with Reese a while back, but he hadn’t said enough to give away any of the facts. There was no reason why he should break his silence now, and no reason at all why he should break it with this woman.

But when he opened his mouth to say so, the wrong words came out. “Her name was Sandra. We were married three years, until I found out she was—” How had Hallie put it? “—boffing half the guys in town.”

“So we both married people with exquisitely bad taste,” she remarked.

“Looks like.” He glanced at his watch. He got an hour for lunch, but he usually took less than half that. Today, for the first time he could recall, he wasn’t anxious to get back to work.

“Will you be staying at Neely’s apartment while they’re gone?”

“She offered, but I’d rather not. It would feel intrusive.” She fiddled with her drinking straw for a moment, then gave him a direct look. “I understand you were there the night Reese’s house got shot up.”

He nodded.

“Neely says you saved her life.”

“She’s got it backward. She and Reese saved my life.”

Hallie knew better. Neely didn’t get things turned around. She was the best darn lawyer in this part of the country, and she always had her facts straight. She hadn’t offered a lot of details about that night in June—being the oldest sister and mother hen, she felt it was her responsibility to protect the younger ones from anything that might worry them—but she’d told them enough to know it was terrifying.

Eddie Forbes, a criminal Neely had sent to prison when she was working as a prosecutor in Kansas City, had sworn revenge on her, and when he got out, he put out a contract on her life. One of the men trying to cash in on it had shot Reese, and a whole gang of them, including Forbes himself, had tracked them to Reese’s house in Heartbreak.

It was at that point Neely’s details had gotten a little fuzzy. All Hallie knew for sure was that Brady had gone to the house to help them, that he’d been willing to die to save Neely and that the house had been shot all to hell. Seven of the bad guys had died that night, including Forbes, shot by Neely herself.

Even weeks later in the middle of a hot, sunny day, the mere thought sent a shudder of revulsion through Hallie. God forbid, if she ever found herself in a similar situation, she hoped she would be as courageous as her sister.

“However it went,” she said, “you have the undying gratitude of the Madison family.”

A faint blush turned his cheeks crimson, and he shrugged awkwardly. “I was just doing my job.”

Right. And if she believed that, no doubt he’d have some fine swampland to offer, too.

Casting about for something to keep the conversation going, she seized one of the more mundane questions new acquaintances always asked. “Where are you from? Or is that another of your deep, dark secrets?”

“Not so deep or so dark, but…yeah. Only Reese knows that one.” He looked as if he wanted to drop it there, then took a breath and answered. “A dusty little town west of Dallas.”

“A Texan. Well, that explains a lot.” She softened the words with a smile. “Contrary to the opinions of every Texan I’ve ever met, being from Texas isn’t such a big deal.”

“You won’t get any argument from me. I left when I could, and I’ve never been back.”

“After the divorce?”

He nodded.

“So I take it you didn’t have any kids.”

A bitter look came across his face, and underneath the black mustache, his mouth thinned in a flat line. “No.”

“Me, neither.” That had been one of the issues in both her second and last marriages. She wanted kids—sometimes wanted them so badly her heart ached with it—and neither husband had been willing. Oh, Max had told her before the wedding sure, they would have all the babies she wanted, but after…. The time had never been right. Their lives were too busy. A baby wouldn’t fit into their lifestyle. He didn’t want the bother. Finally he’d quit making excuses and had told her straight out—no kids, not while she was married to him.

Which side of the question had Brady come down on? Had he wanted a little boy to play football with or a delicate little girl to pamper and protect? Or did he consider children a nuisance that would interfere with his own pleasures?

“What are your plans for this afternoon?” he asked.

“I’m driving over to Heartbreak to meet the contractor at the house. His name’s Dane Watson. Do you know him?”

“I know who he is. He’s a good builder. Honest. And single.”

She gave him a dry look. The only man in the entire state of Oklahoma—heck, in the entire world—whose marital status mattered to her was sitting across from her. It didn’t matter how desperate she was or how handsome and sexy he was, she would not sleep with a married man.

He checked his watch again, and Hallie politely asked, “Am I keeping you from something?”

“Nope.”

“Well…” She hoped her sigh didn’t sound as regretful to him as it did to her. “I should probably go. It’s a bit of a drive to Heartbreak.”

“Yeah, and the penalty for speeding around here can be pretty stiff.”

It was a simple observation, and she was in a sorry state when the first interpretation to pop into her mind was lascivious, if not downright dirty. Now it was her own cheeks turning pink as she stood up, then slung her purse strap over one shoulder. She reached for her trash, but he picked it up first, threw it away, then followed her out the door.

“Where are you parked?” he asked as they stood on the sidewalk under the blistering sun.

“Across from the courthouse. Where are you headed?”

“Same direction.”

She looked in store windows as they walked, but more often than not, her attention was on Brady’s reflection rather than the merchandise. “I can’t wait for the chance to go prowling through all these antique stores. I love neat old stuff.”

“Some of these places would be better labeled junk stores,” he warned.

She smiled up at him. “That’s the best kind.”

At the end of the block, they turned the corner, then stopped beside her car in the first parking space. She opened the door to let the heat radiate out, bent inside to start the engine and turn the air conditioner on high, then faced him again. “Can I say I enjoyed talking to you without scaring you into thinking I want something?”

“I don’t scare easily.”

“There’s not a man alive who can’t be flat-out terrified by the right woman.” Feeling cooler air coming out of her car, she tossed her purse into the passenger seat, then looked back at him. “Anyway, I did enjoy it, and that’s a reference only to the conversation we had today, nothing more. Like I said earlier, I don’t have any expectations.”

He studied her a moment before adjusting the cowboy hat lower over his eyes. “Maybe you should,” he said in a gravelly voice, then started off. At the edge of the street, he glanced back. “See you around.”

She watched until he’d disappeared inside the courthouse, then gave a shake of her head. She didn’t understand men, not for one minute, and she swore she was going to learn to live without them—except, of course, for the occasional temporary lover. But every feminine instinct she possessed suggested that was going to be a much harder proposition here in Buffalo Plains than it would have been in Beverly Hills.

And for that, she could thank Brady Marshall.

Climbing into her car, she backed out of the space, circled halfway around the block and headed south to Heartbreak. It was twenty miles of rolling hills and heavily wooded areas interspersed with pastures that didn’t appear to have anything left to feed the cattle and horses they held. She passed neat farmhouses, occasional trailers, more than a few shabby little places and one particularly ostentatious house just outside Heartbreak.

Heartbreak was not the town she imagined Neely spending the rest of her life in. It lacked the charm of Buffalo Plains, as well as most of the amenities. Downtown filled all of three blocks, and it was all shabby. She passed the Heartbreak Café—Café Shay, Neely called it, after its owner, Shay Rafferty. That was the place you went to find out what was going on in the town, the state and the world. Neely had also told Hallie about the doctor’s office across the street, where Heartbreak’s midwife practiced, who would someday deliver Neely’s babies, and she’d mentioned the hardware store up ahead, owned by Grace James and her husband, Ethan.

Truth was, Neely talked about the place as if she loved it and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Hallie had never loved any of the cities where she’d lived. In fact, at the moment, she had no clue where she was going to live when she left Oklahoma. She hadn’t realized how desperately she wanted out of California until last week, when she’d driven across the state line into Arizona. The terrain hadn’t changed one bit—desert was desert no matter which state it belonged to—but her outlook had. In a matter of seconds, the tension knotting her shoulders had eased, and so had the tight, panicky feeling that had settled in her chest six months earlier and never gone away. Her fingers had loosened their grip on the steering wheel, and she’d sunk a little more easily into the seat.

She’d thought then that she might never go back, not even to pack the rest of her things and sell her house.

She just didn’t have a clue where she would go.

Following the directions Neely had given her, she soon came to a mailbox marked Barnett. She turned into the gravel drive, passed through a heavy stand of blackjack oaks, then pulled into a clearing that wasn’t particularly clear.

A fresh, raw area on the right side of the drive showed where Reese’s house had stood. For the first few weeks after the assault, he and Neely had intended simply to repair, replace and clean up, then move back into the house. When they realized they kept putting off the simple jobs that would make that possible, they decided to raze it and start over from scratch.

Hallie didn’t blame them as she pulled onto the grass beside a half-dozen pickups. All the clean-ups in the world couldn’t make a person forget that people had died there. It would be too creepy to share the house with those memories.

On both sides of the house was pasture, and out back was a huge old barn. Next time she came out, she would have to bring her camera and get some shots of both the barn and the horses outside it.

Across the driveway from the old house site was the new house. Work was progressing rapidly—a good thing, since Neely had already issued invitations to everyone in both the Madison and the Barnett families for Thanksgiving dinner. Hallie found her way inside, got a wolf whistle from a carpenter and another from an electrician—so there, Max—and found Dane Watson in the master bedroom.

Good, honest and single, Brady had said. He’d forgotten to mention tall, muscular and handsome, with surfer-boy blond hair, blue eyes and the biggest dimples Hallie had seen. He looked her over with obvious appreciation, and when they shook hands, he held her hand far longer than he should have…and Hallie didn’t feel a thing. He was gorgeous, funny, charming, and made her feel like the best part of his day, and all she could think was that she liked him, but that was the extent of it.

She felt a tremendous sense of relief when she left the site two hours later. Maybe she really was building up an immunity to men. Maybe, before long, she wouldn’t pay them any more notice than she would the lovely purple-blooming crape myrtle over in the side yard or the Irish setter, gleaming deep mahogany, in the shade of a tree across the street. Pretty objects to be appreciated, then forgotten.

Unbidden, the image of Brady Marshall popped into her mind and burst her bubble. When he’d walked into the sandwich shop, she had gotten the oddest quivery sensation all through her torso—not just butterflies, but butterflies doing acrobatics. Her palms had gotten damp, and she hadn’t been able to decide between sliding onto the floor under the table or making a quick dash for the door while he was facing the counter.

Maybe she was building up an immunity to men.

But apparently Brady Marshall was the exception to the rule.

She was afraid she would have to be dead to be immune to him.

Chapter 3

By the time Brady left the courthouse Monday evening, the sun hung low in the western sky. There was little traffic and no activity as he walked to his department SUV in the lot out back. All the shops and businesses downtown were closed by six o’clock, except on Thursdays, when most stores stayed open an extra two hours. The rest of the week, any money spent in Buffalo Plains at night was spent on food, alcohol, gasoline or at the small Wal-Mart on the edge of town.

Before heading home, he drove by the county maintenance facility in the north part of town and filled up his gas tank. It wouldn’t do to get called out on an emergency in the middle of the night and find out the gas tank was empty.

That done, he started home…and made it as far as the stop-light in front of the courthouse. It was red, and he stopped, wondering idly what he could fix for dinner that wouldn’t take long, paying little attention to the music on the radio, when something—he couldn’t even say what—caught his attention and made him look to his left.

There in front of the First National Bank of Buffalo Plains, fiddling with a camera and a tripod, was Hallie Madison. I imagine in a town like this, it will be impossible to avoid each other entirely, she’d said at lunch. No kidding. He wondered why that was. In spite of the town’s size, he rarely had any problem avoiding people, so why was she any different?

Maybe because she’d been on his mind ever since he’d seen her at the wedding.

Checking the rearview mirror and finding the street clear, he backed up far enough to pull into a parking space, then climbed out. When he crossed the street, Hallie was bent slightly, making adjustments to the camera. He kept his distance and remained silent until she straightened and took a step back.

“What are you doing?”

She automatically smiled when she saw him. “Taking a picture of the courthouse in the setting sun. You’re a master at asking the obvious, aren’t you?”

“That’s what I get paid the big bucks for,” he said dryly.

“Oh, so is this an official interrogation?” She stood straighter and raised her hands in the air. “I’m not doing anything wrong… What’s your official title?”

“Undersheriff.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Gee, I believe I’ll stick with deputy. I swear, Deputy Marshall— Isn’t that cute? Did you ever notice—”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll get it right this time. I swear, Deputy Marshall, I’m not doing anything wrong, and I don’t have any weapons, drugs or contraband. You can search me if you like.”

One innocent, playacting sentence, and it changed the whole tenor of the evening. It was still hot and muggy, but now the air seemed to crackle all around them. Brady felt the strong pull of desire deep in his belly, as if he hadn’t just spent practically two entire nights with this woman. He was finding it difficult to breathe, or think, or to find words to give voice to—especially when the only words he wanted to say were, yes, I like.

Slowly, her gaze locked with his, she lowered her arms, then laced her fingers together. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“Damn,” he murmured. “And here you got my hopes up.” And that wasn’t all.

For a moment she looked uncertain, as if she wasn’t entirely sure he was teasing—fair enough, since he wasn’t either. Then she started fussing with the camera again. “If you work this late every day, you need a raise,” she remarked, her tone a shade too cheerful.