Slow Dance with the Sheriff

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?’