Slow Dance with the Sheriff Read online

  The mayor warmed to her topic and Sarah was momentarily distracted off to one side. Ellie specifically ignored Jed’s eyes burning into her in favor of showing the mayor her courtesy.

  ‘Sheriff,’ Mayor Hollis finally started when the conversation about Larkville’s masonry frontages drew to a comfortable close. She turned a smile on him that was four parts maternal concern and one part admiration. ‘I’m so pleased you’ve found yourself such a lovely and informed lady. I was beginning to despair for you ever settling down.’

  Jed disguised his discomfort behind taking a sip of beer. Ellie only noticed because she’d had her share of that awful, neutral expression in the week she’d known him and she’d already learned to read the tight discipline of his muscles.

  ‘Sarah,’ he ground past his rigid jaw, ignoring the comment entirely and drawing his friend’s focus back to them. ‘Did you want something when you came over?’

  ‘Yes! I need you and Ellie. Time for those dancing lessons I promised. I’ll see you out there.’ She snaffled the mayor’s attention on the subject of the Fall Festival and the two of them turned away.

  Jed actually glanced around for escape.

  Okay…

  Ellie placed her half-drunk sparkling water next to Jed’s barely touched beer on a sideboard and touched his arm. He pulled it away carefully. But she toughed it out and found his eyes. ‘You’ve never been seen in public with a date, Jed. Did you not expect a level of community interest?’

  Or should she be flattered that he’d wanted her here enough not to be swayed by that?

  ‘It’s not their interest that concerns me…’

  ‘Then, what?’

  Emotion warred behind cautious eyes. ‘People think we’re together.’

  She straightened. ‘We are together.’

  His frown was immediate. ‘We’re together, but not…’ She lifted her eyebrows as he floundered, but stayed silent. ‘You know… Together.’

  ‘Jed—’

  ‘You were practically working up a platform for public office with the mayor just then with all the talk about preserving Larkville’s heritage. What message does that send?’

  She glared at him. ‘It says I have good manners. Not that I’m hunting for real estate.’

  Dark conflict ghosted across his eyes. Her mind served up an action replay of every single instance that he’d taken such care to introduce her as just visiting. Tonight. Before tonight. And right behind that was the realisation that the only particularly public thing they’d done was walk a dog and have pancakes. As though by being private he couldn’t be held accountable for what else happened between them.

  ‘What are you really worried about, Jed?’ She frowned. ‘That they might think there’s more to our relationship or that I might?’

  Frustration hissed out of him. ‘Ellie…’

  But she knew she was on to something. Every single one of her insecurities triggered, but if she gave in to the fear she’d never let herself feel like this again. So she tossed her hair back and echoed the smile she’d given the barman. Every bit as bright and every bit as fake.

  ‘They’re just curious, Jed, they’re not queuing up to witness a marriage certificate. Lighten up. Dance. The next time you bring a woman to a mixer—’ she took a deep breath at the unfairness of having to say that ‘—it will barely cause a ripple.’

  His eyes lifted long enough for her to spot the doubt resident there. He sighed, but he couldn’t keep the tension out of his voice.

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s dance.’

  * * *

  Line dancing was much harder than it looked from the outside. Even for someone trained in movement. It took Ellie a few minutes to get used to the requirement to anticipate the steps so that they finished on the beat instead of starting on it—more military than musical—but, before long, the repetition and string of steps started to feel pretty natural.

  She was pleased that it was a non-contact sport on the whole because touching Jed right now was not high on her wanted list, not while she was still so fresh from his overreaction to the mere thought of being connected with her. Men would have fallen over themselves for that impression back home.

  Not that he was most men. If he was she wouldn’t be in this position.

  ‘Well, darn,’ Sarah said over the music from right next to her. ‘You’re a natural. Looks like I’ll have to find something else to trade you for your time.’

  The best part of ballet for her had always been choreography—building complicated dance sequences from established balletic steps. Line dancing was the same in principle. Even dancing in file didn’t feel that foreign; she was well used to the ranks of the corps.

  Jed moved in perfect sync with everyone else who clearly knew this music a whole lot better than she did. Not flashy but not awkward, either. Just…proficient. And perfectly in time. Exaggerated swagger in his steps, and more hip sway than was healthy for her already-straining lungs.

  She glanced at him sideways.

  He was watching her move. Both of them trying so hard not to look too interested in the other. She made herself remember that she was mad.

  Her cheeks warmed with exertion and her heart thumped steadily. Much more of a workout than she might have imagined. Around them, people whooped and clapped and threw in the occasional ‘yee-haw’ as they danced, but Ellie’s focus kept drifting back to Jed’s eyes.

  He may be incomprehensible at times but he was still just as attractive and intelligent as the man she’d kissed just hours before. She dropped her lashes and smiled, concentrating on the movement of his feet to stop her losing her place.

  And possibly her heart.

  They danced like that—ignoring each other and becoming increasingly aware of each other for it—for thirty minutes straight. But it flew past. At last, the band slowed the pace up onstage. Sarah turned to her from her other side as everyone clapped and started moving off.

  ‘I’m going for a drink,’ she panted. ‘Be right back.’

  Ellie’s feet went to follow but she was stopped by a warm hand on her forearm. ‘Dance, Ellie?’

  Jed never dances. Sarah’s words echoed in her mind.

  Her heart, only just beginning to settle, lurched back into a breathless pattering. There was an apology in his deep brown depths and more than a little regret. It made her breast even tighter.

  ‘We just did.’

  He pulled her gently towards him. ‘Oh, no, that was fun but…this…is dancing.’ He stepped in close and slid one arm slowly around her waist, giving her time to get used to his touch. Around them, others did the same.

  ‘Won’t this just draw more attention to us?’

  ‘That horse has bolted.’ He smiled, pulling her closer. ‘Right about the time you started moving to the music.’

  In heels she would have been eye to eye with him. Pity she’d kicked her shoes off once the line dancing hit full speed. As it was, she had to lift her eyes slightly to see into his. She stared at his chin instead, though it was disturbingly close to his full bottom lip. Her breath caught.

  ‘What dance is this?’ she asked, as if that made the slightest difference to whether or not she wanted to be back in his arms.

  ‘Texas slow dance.’ The way he said it…with that tiny curl in his voice. He made it sound sinful.

  Their neighbors shuffled left and right, some glued together like teenagers, some father-daughter pairs with little pink-pumped feet balanced on their fathers’ boots, others with a respectful, first-public-dance distance.

  Like theirs should have been.

  Jed pulled her into him and lifted one of her hands up to his neck. The other he collected in his big palm and threaded his fingers through hers. The arm around her lower back tightened.

  ‘Relax,’ he murmured into her hair. Then his feet started moving.

  A middle-aged woman who’d stepped up with the band started crooning the lyrics to ‘Cry Me a River.’ Slow and sensual. Deep and moving. She
looked like she tossed hay bales by day. It was amazing the secrets some people had.

  Maybe Ellie didn’t hold them all herself.

  Her muscles loosened in increments as Jed swayed her from side to side, and she did her best to anticipate his moves.

  ‘Let me lead, Ellie.’ Soft and low against her ear. ‘Let go.’

  Letting go meant so much more to her than he knew. He was asking her to undo the habits of a lifetime. The fears and hurts. But if there was a man to be holding her up while she let go, Jed was it.

  She let herself be distracted by the feel of his denim thighs brushing against her soft skirt, by all the places she fitted neatly into him. Their bodies constantly rubbing.

  ‘That’s a girl.’ He grinned. ‘You might even start to enjoy it.’

  His gentle words teased an answering smile out of her. She let herself lean into him a tiny bit more.

  Jed led Ellie around and around in a small arc, taking care not to dance her into anyone else, to protect her from the accidental physical contact he knew would rip her out of the happy place she was slipping into.

  Synchronised. Swaying. Lids low. Breath heavy.

  In fact, every part of him felt heavy—lethargic yet excited at the same time. Somewhere at the back of his mind he knew he should be worrying about what message this might send her but, right now, his world began and ended with the woman in his arms. He’d sort the rest out later.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he murmured.

  ‘Mmm…’

  She was practically asleep in his arms. On Ellie, that was a good thing. It meant she trusted him. Enough to drop her guard and let herself relax. Be mortal.

  He hadn’t planned on creating a dance-floor sensation tonight. He’d planned on keeping his separation of the six-degree variety for both their benefit. Ellie didn’t need her emerging awareness trampled all over by a man with no intention of honouring it the way it should be. But somewhere between ‘God Bless Texas’ and ‘Cactus Star’ her energy and presence affected him in a way he was still scrabbling to understand. It wasn’t just the catlike movement of her long body—although that undoubtedly drew the attention of more than one male in the room—and it certainly wasn’t the high-energy, synchronised moves. That only got him thinking of all the other ways the two of them could be synchronised.

  It was her focus. Her determination to do the best job she could, even at something as ridiculous as line dancing.

  Ellie Patterson had a big, flashing perfectionist gene. And an equal part of him responded to that. He found capability pretty attractive. It was right up there with intelligence and compassion on his list of must-haves. And Ellie had all three in multiples.

  All the more reason to stay the heck away from her.

  ‘Ellie?’

  Thanks for the dance, Ellie…

  There’s someone I need to speak to…

  If you’ll excuse me…

  ‘Mmm?’ Her head was nestled in right next to his now, and the warm brush of air from her barely formed response teased the hairs on his neck. Excited them.

  ‘The band’s taken a break,’ he whispered. It was the best he could manage just then, though he knew he should have been walking away. Fast. Her head lifted enough to turn towards the now-empty stage and then her eyes tracked the band members making their way towards the bar.

  ‘Oh…’ She straightened awkwardly and he hated being the trigger for the return of carefully controlled Ellie. A deep something protested with a rush of sensation that tightened his hold.

  ‘Or we could just stay here, dancing.’ Drowning.

  Her head lifted fully. Her skin flushed. The space between them increased. ‘No… I could use a drink.’

  He crossed with her back to where their drinks still waited, warmer and flatter now, loath to let her go but so aware of how many curious eyes were trained on them again following their slow dance. He kept a gentle hand at her back to let her know he was there, and to let everyone watching know anyone messing with her was messing with him. Even that felt like a mistake. But it stayed glued there of its own accord.

  She paused to slide her heels back on and somehow that act signaled the end of relaxed, free Ellie.

  He wasn’t ready for that to happen.

  ‘We should get going.’ The words were out before he thought about what they meant.

  She turned to look at him. ‘Already?’

  ‘You want to stay?’ The question was so very loaded, she’d have to be blind to miss it. He wanted her out of this crowded fishbowl. To get her alone somewhere that they could talk, get to know each other.

  God help him.

  She stared at him, weighing up her options. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘I don’t.’

  It took fifteen long minutes to edge their way around to the exit, making polite conversation all the way. The departure conversations were more excruciating than the arrival ones because there wasn’t a person there who had missed the floor show he’d just put on and he knew he’d set himself up for that. Ellie departed first, ostensibly to use the restroom, but on completion there she turned left instead of right and was gone. He gave it a few more minutes, for appearance’s sake, and then followed her out to his truck. Fooling no one, probably, but at least he’d made an effort to protect her privacy.

  He knew his own was already lost. But that was a small price to pay for moments more of the heaven he’d felt on that dance floor.

  ‘Hey,’ she said as he tumbled into the driver’s seat, her eyes vivid in the moonlight. ‘Thought you might have got snared again.’

  There was only one person he was ensnared by. He turned to her, not prepared to make polite small talk. If he was going to hell he didn’t want to waste a moment. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Home was a two-minute drive. Deputy was ecstatic that they were home so early and only took a further minute to dash outside and lift his leg against the nearest cypress tree. Jed used the time to throw another log on the dwindling fire.

  ‘I feel like I’ve missed so much of normal life,’ Ellie mused from the shadows. Her arms wrapped around her even though the cottage was warm.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t go to my first party until I was twenty-two and that was a full-on New York soiree. To represent the family.’

  He lowered his long body into the sofa, trying hard not to look as desperate as he felt. Trying hard not to feel it. ‘Nothing before that? At all?’

  ‘Not a party. Not a celebration. The occasional end-of-season dance after-party but they tended to be serious kinds of affairs. Lots of sitting around being introspective and deep. Most people had to be up early for rehearsals on the next performance. I was always studying.’ She uncrossed her arms. ‘So this was my first hoedown.’

  He chuckled. ‘It wasn’t a hoedown. But it was fun. Did you enjoy yourself?’

  She studied him across the space and he couldn’t have been more aware of how not close she was keeping herself. But at least she smiled. ‘I think I did.’

  He struggled for easy conversation, to take her mind off the fact they were alone in his house with a bed just a few feet above them. ‘Why did you work so hard as a kid? Dancing. Studying.’

  Confusion riddled her voice. ‘To be good at it. To get good grades.’

  ‘Did you need good grades to be a dancer?’

  She frowned. ‘Not especially. I guess I wanted…a fallback.’

  ‘In case you didn’t make it?’

  ‘My parents had expectations.’

  ‘They expected you to have good grades?’

  ‘They expected me to work hard. I wanted to have good grades.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her frustration showed in the flap of her hands. ‘Because that was what I did. I was good at things. Why the inquisition?’

  He kept his cool, stayed reclined, relaxed. Though what he really wanted to do was drag her out of the shadows into the furnace of the fire. Of his arms. He regretted drawing her a
ttention to the absent band back in the dance hall. They might still be entwined now if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Just trying to decide who you wanted to prove something to.’

  ‘No one.’ It was too immediate. Too practiced. Her eyes flickered. She waited a moment and then whispered, ‘Me…maybe. I just wanted to do well.’

  ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t?’ he asked.

  ‘They would have been disappointed. So would I.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have loved you anyway?’

  She inched closer to him. To the fire. Eventually she perched carefully on the very end of the sofa. She pressed her hands in her lap. ‘Let me paint you a picture. When I was twenty-one, a couple of days after I resigned from the company, I heard my mother talking to my father, bemoaning how I’d shown such promise earlier in my life.’

  Jed’s stomach squeezed in sympathy. ‘Past tense? Ouch.’

  ‘They never would have verbalised it but I felt that expectation my whole life. Mostly coming from my mother. The necessity to prove myself. To earn my place in the family through excellence.’

  ‘You didn’t have to earn it, you had a birthright.’

  ‘I was a fraud.’ Sorrow saturated her features.

  It was his turn to frown.

  ‘I was Eleanor. The capable one. The flawless one.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s what they wanted to see.’

  ‘You’re not a fraud, Ellie—’

  She turned pained eyes to him. ‘I’m not a Patterson.’

  He sat up straighter. ‘What?’

  ‘My mother was already pregnant when she met my—’ She pressed her lips together. ‘When she met Cedric Patterson.’

  Hurt for her washed through him. There was nothing he could say to that.

  ‘I felt so vindicated the day I found out—that all those feelings I had weren’t just neuroses. There was a reason I felt like I didn’t belong.’ Her bitter laugh betrayed the tears thickening her words. ‘Because I didn’t.’

  He was up in a heartbeat, scooting along the sofa and gathering her into his arms. She came willingly. ‘No, Ellie…’

  ‘I was so angry with her, Jed. I’d been through so much, struggled alone for so many years because she made it clear that failure wasn’t an option. Just in me and Matt. Nobody else. Not Alex. Not Charlotte.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe she thought he’d renounce us the first time we made a mistake.’