Montana Lawman

“We want to do it in two weeks,” D.J. said, pulling his brilliant blue gaze from Tiffany to focus on Molly. “We can still use the parking lot here at the library, right?”

Molly nodded. “Are you sure you’ll be able to gather up enough donations in that short amount of time, though? School will be starting right after that, too.”

The kids—ten in all—around the table nodded. D.J. grinned, and Molly could easily see why Becky was smitten. He was seventeen, smart, athletic, blond and about as good-looking as a male could be.

Rob had been blond and blue-eyed, too. As handsome as a movie star, and as cold as the dark side of the moon.

She pushed aside the unwelcome thought. Ever since Harriet’s death, Molly’s memories of Rob had been stirred up. Nightmares in which Rob was the killer and Molly the victim, sleepless nights, near panic attacks. She was almost as much a wreck as she had been when she’d first escaped to Rumor.

She realized the kids were all chattering, and forced herself to focus.

“My mom has been nagging us to clean out the attic and the garage,” D.J. was saying. “There’s enough junk there to supply five rummage sales.” He rolled his eyes and grinned. “It’s a win-win situation. Mom gets off our case about the stuff, and we get a few more bucks for the bookmobile project.”

“I’ll bet we can get Libby Adler to donate some brownies or cookies or something, too.”

“Jessup,” Becky corrected the other girl who’d spoken. “She and Marcus Jessup got married during the Crazy Moon Festival, remember? In a double-wedding ceremony with Nick Sullivan and Callie Griffin.”

“Nick Sullivan is a hunk.” Tiffany spoke up for the first time. “But that Mr. Jessup is totally creepy if you ask me. I bet Libby Adler married him just ’cause of his oodles of money. It definitely wasn’t for his looks. Those scars on his face? Totally scary.”

Becky’s eyes narrowed. “I cannot believe even you are so stupid, Tiffany. I swear, you may be on the honor roll, but you don’t have the sense God gave a stump.”

Tiffany looked bored, but Becky wasn’t done. And frankly, Molly could hardly blame her. Tiffany was a constant trial with her snooty ways.

“Mr. Jessup’s first family died in a fire,” Becky was saying scathingly. “That’s how he got those minor scars. When he was trying to save them.”

Tiffany smirked. “Shows what you know, Becky Reed. I heard he was suspected of killing his first wife.”

Molly had heard enough. “Tiffany—”

“That’s enough,” D.J. cut in. “Mr. Jessup has donated a lot to this town. My dad says he provided the new computer system at the sheriff’s department and didn’t even want anyone to know about it. And it’s true what Bec said about him trying to save ’em.”

Tiffany’s bright blue eyes suddenly flooded with tears and she looked imploringly at D.J. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and wrapped her long fingers around his arm. “You’re right, of course, D.J.”

Most of the kids around the table looked uncomfortable. Molly caught Becky rolling her eyes the moment before she shoved back from the table. “Are we done here?” the girl asked tartly.

Whether the rest of the group figured they were or not, Molly stepped in and made sure of it as she reminded them of their next meeting and told them where they could begin storing items collected for the sale.

Then, with a cacophony of chair legs scraping against the hard floor, the group left en masse, a hoard of basically good kids dressed in everything from blue jeans to bikini tops and shorts dragging purses, backpacks, skateboards and computerized games along with them.

“I’d heard you were working with a group of kids from the high school.”

Molly whirled at the deep voice that came from behind her. “Don’t sneak up behind me.” Her voice was sharp. Shaking.

“Came right through the main doors, Molly.”

Holt walked over to the long, rectangular table and picked up one of the chairs that had been left haphazardly scattered and placed it back at the table. She watched him, torn between suspicion and irritation and something else she didn’t even want to put a name to. She knew what it was to fear a man. She didn’t fear Holt, though.

Not…exactly.

Molly began straightening the rest of the chairs surrounding the table and collecting up the various magazines and books that had been left on top of it. Familiar tasks. Soothing tasks.

Tasks that didn’t occupy her thoughts anywhere near enough to distract her from the deputy.

She kept stealing looks at him from the corner of her eye. He wasn’t wearing his typical uniform today. In fact, he wore a suit. Nothing flashy for the solemn deputy. Medium gray suit. Blinding-white shirt. The tie was a surprise, though.

“Surfboards?” The observation popped out of her mouth. He hadn’t dragged it loose at the collar the way he had his tie yesterday when he’d invaded her Sunday afternoon.

He glanced down, flipping the tie slightly between his long fingers. The pattern in the swirling gray-and-black silk was actually stylized waves complete with surfer and surfboards, something she’d only been able to pick out as she’d rounded the end of the table near where he stood.

“My partner’s wife back in L.A. had a weird sense of humor,” he said with a crooked smile, and Molly felt her nerves tighten oddly.

She turned and shoved her armful of books and magazines onto the book cart. She didn’t want to notice that his smile, faint though it was, made the intimidating man seem momentarily approachable. Human.

He gave no explanation for the reason for his suit, she noticed. Not that she expected one. Not that she wanted one. He was forcing her into helping him with his case, whether she could really be helpful or not.

She didn’t care what the man had been doing all day. She really and truly did not. “I’m surprised you weren’t here snooping the moment the doors opened this morning.” She wanted to kick herself. She began pushing the cart toward periodicals, simply to get away from the deputy and the appalling lack of sense she seemed to have around him.

“I had to be in Whitehorn for a case.”

Harriet’s? She wanted to ask, but by firmly tucking her tongue between her teeth managed to refrain. She began shelving the magazines, annoyed that he’d followed her right between the high shelves. It was dark and dim and he seemed to suck all the air right out of the area.

Okay, it wasn’t dark. It wasn’t dim, she silently acknowledged as she crouched down to reach the bottom shelf. But he still made the area seem that way. Too close. Way too close.

She shot to her feet and pushed the cart rapidly down the row. The front wheel—the one that shimmied a little—squealed loudly. “You know where Harriet’s office is, Deputy,” she said, speaking over the noise. “There’s no point following me back here. Harriet didn’t shelve materials herself. I doubt she hid any secrets of her life back here.”

She clipped the corner of the next shelf with the wheel of her book cart.

“Think maybe you need a license to drive this thing.”

He was standing right behind her, his hands nudging hers away from the push bar of the cart.

She jumped away, then flushed like the ninny she obviously was. “I—” don’t know what to say.

His dark eyes watched her. Waited.

She pressed her lips together and slid between the book cart and the shelving, moving ahead of it, and grabbed up a handful of magazines. It was fortunate that she could nearly do this particular task in her sleep.

He followed along, the book cart moving slowly behind her. Of course the wheel behaved for him.

They went up one row. Down another. From periodicals to nonfiction. From there to fiction.

If she thought waiting for his arrival had been nerve-racking, it was nearly torturous having him close on her heels, his thoughts kept close to himself, well hidden by those unreadable brown eyes.

She wondered for a moment if she’d lose her job if word got out at the way she ran, screaming madly, from the library one hot summer day. Shaking off the absurdity, she turned to the cart only to stop short in surprise.

“You’re finished.”

She looked from the empty book cart that separated them to his face. “Well, this particular task is completed, at least.”

“Molly.”

She jerked, whirling around to see one of the volunteers standing behind her with a frankly curious gaze that took in both Molly and the deputy. She needed to get a grip. “Yes, Mrs. English?”

“It’s five,” the elderly woman said gently. “I wanted to let you know I was leaving.”

Five? Molly managed a smile and thanked the woman as she left. Then she looked over her shoulder at Holt. Just as quickly she looked away. The man was too disturbing by far. “I’ve got to close up. I hadn’t realized it was so late.” She began rolling the book cart to its proper place.

“What’s the rush? You’re often here after five.”

She shoved the cart into its spot beneath a counter. “How did you know that? Spying on me?”

“This place is across from the sheriff’s department.” His voice was mild. “My desk is next to the window in the front. Simple observation makes you paranoid?”

Rob had kept track of every single thing she’d done, every single person with whom she’d had contact. She’d had no privacy, and he’d made darned sure that she knew it.

“I have plans this evening.” She had to step around him to go to her office.

He followed. “You haven’t moved your stuff into Harriet’s office.”

She leaned over to retrieve her purse from the bottom drawer in the desk. “Is there some law against that?”

“What’s with the defensiveness?”

Courtesy of her foot, the drawer shut a little harder than necessary. She straightened, hugging her purse to her. “Nothing.” Just because she’d been told more than once by the trustees that she needed to switch offices in order to make room for a new assistant librarian really was no reason to take it out on the deputy. Even if she did consider him quite responsible for making her a nervous wreck. “I’d think you’d be glad, considering everything, that Harriet’s office is still just the way she left it. Ought to ease your search for clues into her private life.”

“Her office isn’t the connection I need. It’s you. Thought we’d established that.”

“Well,” she grabbed her keys and walked past him, snapping off lights as she made her way to the entrance, “you’re just going to have to wait now. Because I’ll be busy all evening.”

He caught hold of the entrance door before she could open it. “Doing what?”

She looked above her head at his hand, the large square palm, the long, blunt-edged fingers, and swallowed down a jolt. It was just a hand. A man’s hand.

A cop’s hand.

“I have, a, uh, a reading group I meet with on Monday evenings.” It was more or less the truth and was certainly all she intended to divulge to this particular man.

“Are there a lot of reading groups?”

“A few.” She tugged at the door and relaxed some when he moved his hand, allowing her to open it. “I think it was kind of a new concept here in Rumor, but they’re getting more popular.” She waited for him to move out of the way before locking it up.

“Did Harriet meet with any groups?” He easily kept up with her as she hurried to her car.

“Not really. And none of the groups include any men yet, so if that’s where your thoughts are heading, don’t bother.” She tossed her purse across the seat and sat down, wincing a little at the hot, vinyl interior. She cranked down her window, trying not to look at the deputy.

He was standing beside the car, his expression as serious as it always was. She really didn’t want to notice the way his finely woven trousers tightened across his hips because of the hand he’d shoved in one pocket, or the way his silly tie lay against a chest that looked hard even through the severely white shirt he wore. So, of course, that was exactly what she noticed. That, and the way his eyes didn’t look quite so densely brown because the sunlight—still bright and hot even at that hour—was shining almost directly in his face.

His thick, spiky lashes were narrowed around that gleam of coffee-brown that seemed focused directly on her.

“Are you always so intense?” Her face flamed and she cursed her wayward tongue.

He closed his hands over the door, seeming oblivious to the hot metal, and leaned down a little so he could look into the car. “When I’m after something I want.”

His hair truly was black, she thought faintly. There wasn’t the least bit of gold, nor red, nor brown in the thick shock of it that looked in danger of tumbling over his forehead if not for the way it was brushed severely back from his hard face.

She needed therapy. That’s all there was to it. She absolutely, positively could not be physically attracted to this man. She could not be wondering if he brought that single-minded focus into matters of the personal kind.

The intimate kind.

She hadn’t felt a flicker of desire for anyone in so long that she wasn’t even sure that’s what she was feeling now. Only the curling in her stomach as she dragged her gaze from the very masculine hands not ten inches from her shoulder made a mockery of that particular notion.

“And you want Harriet’s killer,” she finished. It took two tries before she managed to fit her key in the ignition.

He was silent so long that she turned to look at him. Only to find that intense gaze focused on her face once more.

Her mouth ran dry and she swallowed. Reminded herself harshly that this man, Deputy Holt Tanner, represented everything that she’d left. No, that she’d been forced to flee.

“Yeah. I want her killer.” His lips twisted. “I want…a lot of things. But that’ll do for now.” He straightened and thumped the door with his palm before finally removing his hands. “Have fun with your reading group. I’ll be by the library first thing tomorrow.”

Then he was stepping away from the car, sliding off his jacket and hitching it over his shoulder with his thumb as he walked away.

She closed her eyes for a moment, willing her heart to stop racing, her stomach to stop jumping. When she opened them again, the deputy was no longer in sight.

She told herself she was glad.

Chapter Four

H olt saw Molly’s car on the side of the highway and immediately slowed, pulling up behind her.

It was nearly midnight. He’d followed her when she’d left the library. He hadn’t expected to make a second trip into Whitehorn that day, but that’s where she headed, so that’s where he’d followed. As far as he was concerned, the second trip was a lot more worthwhile than the wild-goose chase that Dave Reingard had sent him on for the first one.

Once Molly reached her destination that evening, for three hours he’d sat in his dust-covered truck far enough away to avoid suspicion outside a large house that he happened to know was a domestic-abuse shelter. He grimly speculated over what Molly was doing inside.

Reading group?

He’d doubted it.

Once he’d seen her leave—she’d stood in the front and chatted for a solid twenty minutes with two other women before driving away—he’d left his truck and walked over to the shelter where he’d had a brief chat with the director of the facility.

Angel Ramirez had been annoyingly closemouthed. The only useful thing she had imparted was her comment that there were some volunteers—women who’d escaped their lives of abuse—who met with the current residents in group sessions to help reinforce their belief in a life other than what they’d been enduring.

Afterward he’d pulled into a coffee shop and stared into a cup of coffee, his twisted mind easily conjuring images of the kinds of horrors that those “volunteers” had probably endured.

That Molly had endured.

There was a time when Holt would have gone into a bar and tossed back a shot or two of whiskey to dull the images. But not anymore. He’d given up drinking around the same time he’d given up a lot of other things.

When he finally hit the road, he sure as hell hadn’t expected to come across Molly’s car on the highway, long after she’d already departed Whitehorn.

She should have been home, safe and sound in bed.

The relief he felt when his headlights illuminated the shape of her sitting behind the wheel was all out of proportion. Yeah, it was late. And yeah, she was a good fifteen miles outside of Rumor. He would be concerned about the safety of any woman stopped alone like this on the side of a highway.

The rationalizations were sound, the relief inside him way beyond rationalizing.

He left the engine and the lights going, and walked up the side of the road, giving her plenty of time to see him.

Her window was rolled down, and he could see her fingers flexing around the steering wheel. Her face was a wash of ivory, her hair a gleam of moonlight as she turned to look at him when he stopped beside the car.

“Having problems?”

At least she wasn’t startled by him. Nor did she look exactly thrilled to see him.

“The engine quit.”

“Have you called a tow?”

The glance she cast him was brief. “Yes, Deputy, I called a tow. I stuck my head out the window and yelled at the very top of my voice. I’m sure someone heard and will be along shortly.”

“You don’t have a cell phone.”

“No.”

“Nearly everyone has a cell phone these days.”

“I don’t. Nobody needs to call me.”

“And there is nobody you need to call.”

“Assistant librarians don’t earn enough money to spend it on unnecessary luxuries.”

“You’re head librarian now. And what about emergencies like this?”

“I could have walked.”

“In the middle of the night? Fifteen miles?”

“If I had to.”

She might, at that, he thought, and refrained from giving her the lecture about safety that automatically sprang to mind. “Pop the hood.”

“Why?”

He shoved his fingers through his hair. The woman could give lessons in being suspicious. Not that he was one to talk. “To see if we can’t get this bucket of bolts going again.”

“My car is not a bucket of bolts.” Her voice was defensive. Nevertheless, he heard the distinctive pop of the hood release when she pulled it.

He bent over a little, looking past her into the car at the dash.

She stiffened like a shot. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure your gas gauge isn’t reading empty.”

“I’m not that foolish.”

But she might have been that distracted. Along with Angel Ramirez’s other miserly details, she had told him the group session that night had been particularly grueling.

He headed back to his truck. The opening of her car door was easily audible over the engine he’d left running.

“You’re not l-leaving?”

“No.” He pulled open his door and retrieved his flashlight. He flicked it on. “Remember this?”

The light from his headlights easily illuminated her face, along with the tangle of emotions that crossed it. Relief. Despair.

God. Of all the women for him to jones over, she had to be the most unsuitable.

He walked back to her car and lifted the hood.

She followed, and even though she kept a good distance between them, he was still damnably aware of her. The way she sucked in the corner of her lower lip as she’d look at him when she thought he was unaware. The way a few strands of hair had worked loose of the knot at the back of her head to cling to the delicate line of her jaw, the paleness of her neck.

He glared at the engine, wanting to ask her about the shelter, knowing she’d have a fit if she knew he’d followed her. As if her car had heard his thoughts, the narrow brace slipped and the hood crashed down on his shoulder.

He swore under his breath while Molly jumped back with a gasp. She hurriedly reached out, her hands knocking into his as they both reached for the brace to lift the hood off him.

He heard the way she sucked in her breath, and wanted to swear at the way she yanked her hand back. He was no prize, he’d be the first to admit it. But he wasn’t used to women being afraid of him. Not unless they were walking on the wrong side of the law.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. But hold this,” he muttered, and pushed the flashlight into her hands. “So I can see what I’m doing,” he added pointedly.

She made a soft huff and redirected the beam from his eyes to the engine.

He stared hard, waiting until the spots in front of his eyes disappeared, then began checking hoses and belts. He found the problem quickly enough. “You need a new fan belt. For that matter, you ought to have the whole thing tuned up.”

“Do-re-mi,” she murmured.

He caught himself from smiling as he lowered the hood. “Lock it up. I’ll drive you back to town.”

“You can’t fix it?”

He didn’t know whether to be flattered that she’d thought he might be able to or amused that she seemed peeved that he couldn’t. “Yeah, I could. With the right parts.” He took the flashlight from her and turned it off. “I’m not carrying even the wrong parts.”

“Only flashlights and first-aid kits.”

And evidence-collection kits, he thought. One that contained the print he’d lifted from her drinking glass. There was a part of him that wanted to run that print no matter what so-called agreement he’d struck with the woman.

There was a part of him that wanted to forget he’d ever taken the damned thing in the first place.

“Do you need help with anything?” He glanced at the lumps sitting on the passenger seat.

“No.” Her voice was sharp. Defensive. If he’d been back in L.A., he’d have wondered just what was in that briefcase and enormous purse that would cause a driver to be so antsy with a cop. But he wasn’t in Los Angeles anymore. And thank God for it.

He was standing on the side of a deserted highway in the middle of the night with a woman he wanted but couldn’t trust, even if he could get past her thick defenses.

“Suit yourself.” Leaving her to deal with her car, he went back to his truck and radioed in for a tow. Then he sat there, wrist propped over his steering wheel, as he watched her through the windshield.

The soft-sided briefcase she hefted over one shoulder looked heavy enough to knock her over, and he muttered an oath and shoved open the door and strode over to her.

“Don’t argue. There are some things you’re just going to have to put up with when it comes to me,” he said flatly as he slid the strap from her shoulder and took it. “What’s in here? Bricks?”

She pulled the second bag out of the car and slammed the door shut. “Books. For the reading group, remember? I told you I could manage it.”

The reading group story again. Right. Angel Ramirez hadn’t said squat about a reading group. “So you did. Am I complaining about it?”

“I—” She looked up at him, her expression guarded. “I’m sorry. I thought you were.”

“I wasn’t.” He headed toward his truck. When she stayed right where she was, he looked back at her. Standing beside her twenty-year-old car, clutching her enormous carpetbag of a purse to her with both hands, the faint night breeze barely enough to stir the hem of her floaty pink dress about her shapely knees.

She’d spent her entire Monday evening with a group of women living at a shelter. She still had a small plastic strip on her shin that he figured he recognized.

He let out a long breath. “Come on, Molly,” he said quietly. “Stop expecting the worst. Everything is going to be fine.”

Her fine eyebrows drew together. “With my car, you mean.”

“Yeah. Right.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then walked to his truck. She stowed her purse on the floor by her feet and carefully nudged aside the jacket of his suit as if she might catch something from it.

She didn’t speak until the lights of Rumor were visible through the windshield. “Thank you for stopping.”

“All part of being a public servant.”