Slow Dance with the Sheriff Read online

  Jed snorted.

  ‘I know. Crazy, right? Unsurprisingly I haven’t been all that successful.’ She squeezed the words out through a suddenly tight throat.

  The sounds of Deputy snuffling around and ducks quacking broke up the awkward silence.

  ‘Ellie…’ A warm hand on her shoulder turned her more fully back to him. She hadn’t even realised she’d turned away. ‘I meant that I couldn’t imagine a woman like you settling for being someone’s trophy wife.’

  Heat spread up her throat. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You assumed I was saying I don’t think you’re worth trophy status? Or attractive enough?’

  She forced her eyes away, out to the sparkling blue water. Maybe there’d be a miracle and the aquifer would surge up and wash her away from this excruciating moment.

  ‘Can you literally not see it?’ he murmured.

  The open honesty in his voice beckoned. Her heart thumped. She slowly brought her gaze back around. ‘I spent a really long time doubting every part of myself, Jed. And I know how I must have looked to people back then. It’s hard to forget that.’ And to forgive herself for letting it happen.

  ‘Back then.’ He stepped closer. Removed his sunglasses so that she could drown in his eyes instead of the aquifer. ‘You’re not that girl any more.’

  ‘I’m still me inside.’

  He stopped a foot away. ‘Take it from a man who never knew you before a few days ago, Ellie, and who doesn’t hold those past images in his head. You are—’ he struggled for the right word and her heart thumped harder at the caution in his voice ‘—arresting. You might have detoured on your path to beautiful but you’re unquestionably here now. Has no one ever said that before?’

  The back of her shirt collar was fast becoming a furnace.

  ‘Or did you just not believe them?’

  She took a breath. ‘They would have said anything.’

  ‘You think they were just trying to get into your bed?’

  ‘My bed. My inheritance. My seat on the board of Daddy’s company.’

  He stared at her. ‘Wow. That’s a horrible way to live.’

  She shrugged.

  He stared. And stepped closer.

  ‘So, what happens when a man who isn’t interested in your money or your name tells you you’re beautiful? Do you believe him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She swallowed, though there was nothing to swallow. ‘Words are easy.’

  ‘What if he shows you?’ He closed the final inches between them, paused a heart’s breath away. ‘Would you believe him then?’

  Words couldn’t come when you had no air. Ellie stared as Jed blazed sincerity down at her and the moment for protest passed. Then he lowered his head, turned it so that his hat wouldn’t get in the way and stretched his neck towards her.

  ‘I’m supposed to be staying away from you,’ he breathed against her skin.

  Her head swam; making sensible words was suddenly impossible. ‘Whose idea was that?’

  Sensuous lips stretched back over perfect teeth. ‘Deputy’s.’

  All she had to do was shrink back, like she had a hundred times in New York on curbsides, in doorways, under lampposts, in elevators. The good-night moment of truth. Step away, mutter something flippant and flee into the night. But, as Jed’s broad silhouette against the midmorning sun bore down on her, both his hands out to the side as he made good on his promise not to touch her, Ellie couldn’t bring herself to evade him.

  Euphoric lightness filled her before her chest tightened.

  She didn’t want to escape. She wanted Jed to kiss her. And she wanted to kiss him back.

  ‘What does he know?’ she whispered. ‘He’s just a dog.’

  He continued his slow sink, his body twisting forward so that only one part of them was going to touch, his eyes gripping hers the way his hands were careful not to. A tiny breath escaped his lips and brushed hers a bare millisecond before their mouths met.

  His lips were soft and strong at the same time. Dry and deliciously moist.

  Heat swirled around the only place they made contact, and Ellie’s head swam with his scent. His warm touch grew stronger, pressed harder, fixing her to him as though they were glued. She moved her mouth against his, experimenting, tasting. Exploring. He reciprocated, meeting her stretch halfway.

  She made the tiniest sound of surprise low in her throat. Her stretch? But, sure enough, she stood tipped forward on her toes using every bit of her ballerina’s balance to make sure their lips didn’t separate. Jed’s breath coming faster excited hers. His lips opened more, nibbling gently, then smiling into the kiss.

  She leaned into his strong body.

  Initiating contact was as good as giving him permission. Two large hands slipped up and into her hair where it hung over her shoulders, working their way up to the twin combs that kept it neatly back from her face. He slid them free and let her thick hair fall forward over both of them, and he deepened the kiss, his lips and his teeth parting and his tongue joining the discussion.

  Ellie’s entire body jerked, breaking away from him. Jed’s kiss was so much more than she might have imagined but she’d never had someone kiss her like that—never let them—and her body reacted before her head could.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  He didn’t seem the slightest bit put-out. Though his pupils were the size of saucers. ‘You didn’t like it?’

  It wasn’t really a question. He seemed very clear on the impact his kiss had on her. His own chest was heaving, too. He just wanted her to deny it.

  But old habits died too hard. ‘I thought you didn’t mix business and pleasure?’ she hedged, desperately trying to manage the sudden tumult of emotion.

  He blew a controlled stream of air through tight lips, getting himself back under full control. Like she should. ‘You’re from out of state.’

  Guilt surged up fast and intense. Technically, yes. Would he have kissed her at all if he knew she was a Calhoun? ‘But I’m your customer at the Alamo.’

  ‘Consider this your eviction notice.’

  He was having too much trouble getting his breath back for her to take him at all seriously. A rare sensation flooded her body—a rush at having his obvious and intense interest focused on her, and a tingly kind of awe that she wasn’t hating it.

  On the contrary.

  Power surged through her disguised as confidence. She chuckled. ‘That won’t be necessary. If you’re happy to abandon your principles the first time you get a girl next to a romantic lake—’

  ‘Wetland.’

  ‘—then I’m willing to be your accomplice.’

  His eyes grew serious. A silent moment passed. ‘Can I touch you again, Ellie?’

  It was impossible to know where dread finished and anticipation started in the complicated breathlessness that answered.

  She forced herself to inhale. ‘Depends. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘I’d just…’ He frowned. ‘I’d like to hold your hand. And just stand here for a little bit.’

  Gratitude very nearly expressed itself as tears. Two firsts on the same day. Her first proper, toe-curling kiss, and the first time anyone had asked her permission about her body.

  Ellie took a breath and held out a surprisingly steady hand. Jed curled his palm around it and threaded his fingers through hers and let their combined weight sink it down between them. She turned out to stare at the water. So did Jed.

  And they stood there.

  Like that.

  For maybe ten silent minutes.

  Jed’s steady heat soaked through into Ellie’s tense fingers and, bit by bit, her nerves eased, until she could genuinely say she liked it. It was quiet and mutually supportive and—a tiny smile stole across her face—who knew holding hands could be so sensual.

  ‘Would you like to go to a dance tonight?’ The words were out before she even realised she’d thought them.

  Jed’s chin dropped to his chest and he chuckled. ‘I’ve been standing here
working my way up to asking you the exact same thing.’

  She tossed her loose hair back. ‘Snoozers are losers.’ Where was this incredible…lightness coming from? Since when did she flirt so unashamedly?

  Since now apparently.

  ‘I get to take you to out.’ He smiled. ‘That’s not losing.’

  She smiled up at him and fought her body’s instinctive desire to protect itself. Like Jed never meeting someone if he didn’t go outside of his county, she’d never find the sort of closeness she craved if she didn’t lower her shields from time to time.

  Clearly this wasn’t going to be forever—Jed had basically said so—but she’d been waiting her whole life to feel what she was feeling now. She’d just about given up on it. So she wasn’t going to take that for granted.

  ‘You do realise it will involve dancing,’ he teased.

  ‘Sarah still owes me line-dancing lessons.’ And she would die for a chance to dance with a real Texan sheriff.

  ‘Larkville is an amazing place,’ she said softly, her eyes looking out over the water. It was almost as if Larkville Ellie and New York Ellie were different women. Cousins. Maybe she would have grown up to be a totally changed person here, with the Calhouns. A woman with a great relationship with her mother, her siblings. A woman who was free to be wild and crazy if she felt like it. A woman who wasn’t at war with her body. Then again, if she had, would she have been available when Jed came strolling into town three years ago? Or would she have hooked up with some cowboy and have a dozen kids and a double mortgage by then?

  Meeting him and not being able to have him. Impossible to imagine.

  Yet she had no trouble at all imagining herself sitting on a porch rocker with Jed’s kids at her hip. It was disturbingly vivid. And most unnatural, for her.

  ‘I’m so glad I met you.’

  There. It was said. Six short little words but they communicated so much.

  She extracted her hand from his under the pretense of finding a stick to throw for Deputy. He exploded into ecstatic life and bounded after it, before bringing it back to her on wet paws. She threw it again. In her periphery she saw the shadow pass over Jed’s angular features before he masked it.

  Ellie Patterson—Ellie Calhoun—was a work in progress and she had been since she first started to get well. If Jed couldn’t deal with baby steps, then he wasn’t the man she thought he was.

  The man she secretly hoped he really was.

  The man that was going to be hard to top when she went back to New York.

  Assuming she went back at all.

  It all rested on how Jess and her other siblings felt about her arrival. But they contacted her; they invited her down to the memorial festival for Clay Calhoun. They opened the door to her and Matt becoming a part of their family.

  But what if that was just a one-off, ‘love to see you at the festival but then go on back to New York’ kind of thing? What if she’d badly misinterpreted Jess’s letter. There was a big difference between ‘come visit’ and ‘come stay.’

  She glanced at Jed as he got into the throwing game with Deputy and chewed her lip. Of course, staying and being a Calhoun would kill any chance of something more happening with Sheriff Never-Mix-Business-with-Pleasure. But there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it now. That die was cast the moment she got in her rental car and headed south out of New York.

  Actually, it was cast thirty years ago when her mother first did.

  Her stomach sank. Mind you, not staying was going to do the same thing. Jed left New York far behind him three years ago.

  There was something just a little bit tragic about the haste with which her body accepted that she might have to walk away from Jed. Like it was conditioned to being denied.

  There was only one way to fix that.

  She glanced at the strong back and shoulders playing tug of war with one-hundred-plus pounds of dog and wondered if she had the courage.

  He wasn’t promising forever but he could change her life for now. They had two more weeks.

  And ‘for now’ started this evening at the Larkville Cattleman’s Association mixer.

  * * *

  It was just like something she might have seen on a movie. Or a Texan postcard. The residents of Larkville tricked up in their newest stetsons, their shiniest boots and their tightest jeans. Little miniature cowboys and Miss Junior Corn Queen wannabes running around between the legs of the bigger, adult versions and the rest perched on hay bales stacked around the old hall. Chatting. Laughing.

  Pointing.

  She was a bit of a spectacle since she’d arrived with Jed who, it seemed, was generally spectacle enough himself—at least with the women present—but no one looked so surprised that she believed her arrival was totally unheralded.

  Clearly the gossip vine had done its job.

  On walking in, Jed went straight into public-officer mode, greeting people, asking about their barn conversions and their heavy-equipment licenses and their wayward teenage sons, and Ellie trailed politely alongside smiling and nodding and shaking hands just as she had at so many New York events. She was well accustomed to arrival niceties with strangers and to being the one everyone showed interest in—a Patterson at their party—so the speculation she was fielding from all angles didn’t really faze her.

  But it bothered Jed.

  It took her some time to register the way his spine seemed to ratchet one notch tighter every time someone asked for an introduction or every time they didn’t ask but their badly disguised curiosity drifted to her.

  Jed’s lips tightened as another beaming face made a beeline for them.

  She couldn’t hide her chuckle. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

  Whether he wanted one or not, she knew from personal experience that one’s fingers couldn’t twist with anxiety while they were otherwise occupied negotiating a glass. In his case, maybe holding a beer would allay those tense fists he was making and releasing down by his denim-covered thighs.

  The Starlight Room in New York or a Cattlemen’s Hall in Texas, people were people no matter what zip code they came from. There was one sure way to end all the speculation… Feed the beast.

  She put on her game face and marched straight up to the bar, faking it one hundred per cent.

  ‘What can I get you, darlin’?’

  She threw a blinding smile at the man behind the bar and earned herself a slightly dazzled expression in return. ‘Hi, I’m Ellie Patterson. Can I have a sparkling water please? And a light beer for the sheriff.’

  Within minutes the whole place would know who she was, that she wasn’t cowed by the pointing, she wasn’t going to get drunk and do something scandalous, and that she was here—officially—with their sheriff. For some reason all those things felt enormously important to get settled straight up.

  Especially the last one.

  Her eyes went to Jed through the crowd and she could tell by his rigid posture that things weren’t improving. Sure enough, two pairs of eyes flicked her way for a heartbeat. Only one pair looked comfortable.

  She made herself smile at them and then turned casually back to the barman who was finishing up her order. These people might find out later that she was a Calhoun and so she wanted their first impression of her to be a worthy one. And if Jed was having some kind of change of heart about coming here tonight…

  His problem.

  ‘Miss Patterson…’ The man slid her two drinks and a few bills. From darlin’ to miss in twenty seconds. Mission accomplished. She slid the considerable change straight back to him and earned herself his loyalty as well as his appreciation.

  ‘Ellie!’

  Sarah! ‘Thank goodness,’ she muttered under her breath. Just because she was used to living life under the microscope didn’t mean a moment’s relief from it wasn’t welcome. She leaned in for an air kiss.

  ‘Forget that, Ellie, you’re in Texas now.’

  Two slim arms were around her, hugging hard, before she even had time to thi
nk about what was about to happen. The air left her in a rush. But Sarah looked completely unaffected when she pulled back and launched straight into a run-down of what they’d missed in the half-hour since the dance started and the progress she’d made on planning the Fall Festival. Most of it meant nothing, in fact most of it washed right over her because she was so busy concentrating on how very pleasant that hug had felt and how very little the universe had imploded because of it.

  Maybe she was as normal as anyone else now. If she let herself be.

  The novelty of that stole her breath.

  ‘I’m so glad you came. I have an agreement to make good on. Line-dancing lessons in exchange for your event-management services.’

  Ellie tuned back in fully. ‘I was a dancer for ten years, Sarah,’ she confessed belatedly, and wished she’d just said it back when it was first suggested. ‘Ballet.’

  Sarah took the surprise in her stride. ‘Ballet? Pfff…you don’t know what dancing is, woman! Come on.’ She dragged Ellie by the forearm across the room where Jed now stood talking to an elegant woman. ‘Excuse us, Mayor Hollis,’ Sarah interrupted brightly. ‘We need to borrow the sheriff for a bit.’

  Jed immediately turned his focus on to Ellie. ‘Mayor, this is Eleanor Patterson visiting from New York City. Ellie, Mayor Johanna Hollis.’

  Ellie knew how this went. She passed Jed his beer and reached her free hand forward. ‘Mayor, I’ve been enjoying your town very much.’

  The mayor knew how it went, too. Her smile was professional but tight enough to suggest she thought she was being patronised by the city slicker. ‘Thank you, Eleanor. We’re very proud of it.’

  That should have been it—niceties exchanged—but Ellie felt a burning need to make sure Johanna Hollis knew she meant it. ‘I’ve been reading up on the architecture in this part of Texas. You have some amazing stone facades still standing. I gather not all towns are as committed to retention as Larkville is?’

  A different light blinked to life in Mayor Hollis’s eyes. And in Jed’s. ‘No—’ she turned more fully towards Ellie ‘—you would not believe how hard it is to convince people to maintain our heritage…’