Slow Dance with the Sheriff

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.