Slow Dance with the Sheriff Read online

  She pulled herself together. ‘I’m expected, but I’m…early.’ Cough. A couple of months early. ‘I wasn’t aware of Jessica’s plans.’

  They fell to silence again. Then he busied himself with more cows. They were starting to move more easily now that their volume had reduced on this side of the wire, inversely proportional to the effort the sheriff was putting in. His movements were slowing and his breath came faster. But every move spoke of strength and resilience.

  ‘Your timing is off,’ he puffed between heaving cows. ‘Holt’s away, too, right now and Meg’s away at college. Nate’s still on tour.’

  Her chest squeezed. Two brothers and two sisters? Just like that, her family doubled. But she struggled to hide the impact his simple words had. ‘Tour? Rock star or military?’

  He slowly turned and stared right at her as if she’d insulted him. ‘Military.’

  Clipped and deep. Maybe she had offended him? His accent was there but nowhere near as pronounced as the young cowboy she’d met out at the Calhoun ranch who told her in his thick drawl that Jess wasn’t home. Least that’s what she’d thought he’d said. She wasn’t fluent in deep Texan.

  The animals seemed to realise there were now many more of them inside the field than outside it and they began to drift back through the fence to the safety of their numbers. It wasn’t quick, but it was movement. And it was in the right direction.

  The sheriff whistled and his dog immediately came back to his side. They both stood, panting, by her rental’s tailpipe and watched the dawdling migration.

  ‘He’s well trained,’ Ellie commented from her position above the sheriff’s shoulder, searching for something to say.

  ‘It was part of our deal,’ he answered cryptically. Then he turned and thrust his hand up towards her. ‘County Sheriff Jerry Jackson.’

  Ellie made herself ignore how many cow rumps that hand had been slapping only moments before. They weren’t vermin, just…living suede. His fingers were warm as they pressed into hers, his shake firm but not crippling. She tried hard not to stiffen.

  ‘Jed,’ he modified.

  ‘Sheriff.’ She smiled and nodded as though she was in a top-class restaurant and not perched on the back of a car surrounded by rogue livestock.

  ‘And you are…?’

  Trying not to tell you, she realised, not entirely sure why. For the first time it dawned on her that she’d be a nobody here. Not a socialite. Not a performer. Not a Patterson.

  No responsibilities. No expectations.

  Opportunity rolled out before her bright and shiny and warmed her from the inside. But then she remembered she’d never be able to escape who she was—even if she wasn’t in fact who she’d thought she was for the past thirty years.

  ‘Ellie.’ She almost said Eleanor, the name she was known by in Manhattan, but at the last moment she used the name Alex called her. ‘Ellie Patterson.’

  ‘Where are you staying, Ellie?’

  His body language was relaxed and he had the ultimate vouch pinned high on his chest—a big silver star. There was no reason in the world that she should be bristling at his courteous questions and yet…she was.

  ‘Are you just making conversation or is that professional interest?’

  His polite smile died before it formed fully. He turned up to face her front-on. ‘The Calhouns are friends of mine and you’re a friend of theirs…’ Though the speculation in his voice told her he really wasn’t convinced of that yet. ‘It would be wrong of me to send you on your way without extending you some country courtesy in their place.’

  It was credible. This was Texas, after all. But trusting had never come easy to her. And neither had admitting she wasn’t fully on top of everything. In New York, that was just assumed.

  She was Eleanor.

  And she’d assumed she’d be welcomed with open arms at the Calhoun ranch. ‘I’m sure I’ll find a place in town…’

  ‘Ordinarily I’d agree with you,’ he said. ‘But the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce is having their annual convention in town this week so our motel and bed and breakfasts are pretty maxed out. You might have a bit of trouble.’

  Embarrassed heat flooded up her back. Accommodation was a pretty basic thing to overlook. She called on her fundraising persona—the one that had served her so well in the ballrooms of New York—and brushed his warning off. ‘I’m sure I’ll find something.’

  ‘You could try Nan’s Bunk’n’Grill back on I-38, but it’s a fair haul from here.’ He paused, maybe regretting his hospitality in the face of her bland expression. ‘Or the Alamo, right here in town, can accommodate a single. It’s vacant right now but that could change any time.’

  Having someone organise her didn’t sit well, particularly since she’d failed abysmally to organise herself. If she had to, she’d drive all the way to Austin to avoid having to accept the condescension of strangers.

  ‘Thanks for the concern, Sheriff, but I’ll be fine.’ Her words practically crunched with stiffness.

  He studied her from behind reflective sunglasses, until a throat gurgle from Deputy got his attention. He turned and looked back up the dirt road where a dust stream had appeared.

  ‘That’s Calhoun men,’ he said simply. ‘They’ll deal with the rest of the steer and repair the fence.’

  Instant panic hit her. If they were Calhoun employees, then they were her employees. She absolutely didn’t want their first impression of her to be like this, cowering and ridiculous on the rooftop of her car. What if they remembered it when they found out who she was? She started to slide off.

  Without asking, he stretched up over the trunk and caught her around the waist to help her dismount. Her bare feet touched softly down onto the cow-compacted earth and she stumbled against him harder than was polite.

  Or bearable.

  She used the moment of steadying herself as an excuse to push some urgent distance between them but he stayed close, towering over her and keeping the last curious cows back. A moment later, a truck pulled up and a handful of cowboys leapt off the tray and launched into immediate action. That gave her the time she needed to slip her heels back on and slide back into the rental.

  She was Eleanor Patterson. Unflappable. Capable. Confident.

  Once inside, she lowered her window and smiled her best New York dazzler out at him. ‘Thank you, Sheriff—’

  ‘Jed.’

  ‘—for everything. I’ll know better than to get out in the middle of a stampede next time.’

  And just as she was feeling supremely on top of things again, he reached through her open window and brushed his fingers against her braided hair and retrieved a single piece of straw.

  Her chest sucked in just as all the air in her body puffed out and she couldn’t help the flinch from his large, tanned fingers.

  No one touched her hair.

  No one.

  She faked fumbling for her keys and it effectively brushed his hand away. But it didn’t do a thing to diminish the temporary warmth his brief touch had caused. Its lingering compounded her confusion.

  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.