Slow Dance with the Sheriff Page 8

  ‘Damned fool livestock were just fine. Was the fence came off second best.’

  Ellie sagged back in her seat.

  ‘Why don’t you leave Deputy Dawg with me, Sheriff,’ Wes offered. ‘He can mix it up with some of the hands till you pick him up from the homestead. Then he won’t get in your way up at the mine.’

  It was crazy to think of a dog as a chaperone but having Deputy along made this whole thing feel less like a date and more like an outing. Leaving him behind threw everything into a new light. But saying no would only raise more speculation in Wes’s shrewd hazel eyes. ‘He’d enjoy that, thanks, Wes.’

  Deputy leapt—literally—at the chance to get out of the car and visit with Wes. He was still running the older man in circles as Jed rumbled the SUV up and over the hill. The side of his face tingled and he knew Ellie was staring at him. He met her speculative gaze.

  ‘Mine?’ she queried. ‘We’re going hunting for gold?’

  Of course she didn’t miss Wes’s slip. ‘Part of the Calhoun fortune was made on mineral rights,’ he said simply. ‘The Double Bar C is dotted with speculative mines going back a century.’

  Her brows dropped. ‘And you thought a dress and heels would be appropriate attire for exploring an old mine?’

  The image made him smile. If there was a woman to pull that off it was Ellie Patterson. He had a feeling she’d tough out any situation with finesse. ‘We’re not exploring it, exactly.’

  ‘What are we doing…exactly?’

  Here we go… Make or break time. He’d come up with this idea in that crazy, anything’s possible, just-before-you-fall-asleep moment after he collapsed back into bed this morning. Seemed to him that Ellie lived her life trussed up in expectations and New York niceties and he wondered what she would do if she let go of all that, just for a moment.

  Let herself just…be.

  But this could go only two ways.

  He took a breath and just leapt right in. ‘How do you feel about bats?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘BATS?’

  Ellie stared at Jed. He didn’t seem to be joking so she dug a little further. ‘Baseball or vampire?’

  Those gorgeous lips twisted. ‘Just regular bats.’

  ‘I…’ Was this a trick question? But he looked serious enough. ‘I’ve seen bats before, feeding high over Central Park.’ She almost dared not ask. ‘Why?’

  ‘I want you to see one of Larkville’s most amazing sights.’

  ‘You must have a low opinion of your town if a bunch of bats in an old mine is one of its highlights.’

  ‘That’s not a “no.”’

  ‘I’m not going to say no or yes until I know exactly what you have in mind.’

  He stared at her long and hard. ‘Can I ask you to trust me? I don’t want to spoil the surprise.’

  Any surprise that had bats in it couldn’t be all that great. But this was Texas, her genetic home, and he was looking at her with such optimism…

  He pulled the SUV up on a ridge top and pulled the handbrake on hard.

  ‘I’m trusting you that this won’t be bad, Jed.’ She hated that there was a quaver in her voice as she stepped out of the vehicle.

  ‘It’s not bad. And I’ll be right here with you.’

  Her body responded to his low promise in a ripple of shivers.

  The sun was half hidden behind the hills and ridges of Hayes County but Jed left the SUV’s headlights on for illumination. They pointed across the void where the earth dropped clean away.

  ‘If we’re here for sunset we should have driven faster,’ she joked, not entirely comfortable with having no idea what they were doing.

  ‘Trust me,’ he murmured, close behind her. ‘Just let something happen to you, not because of you.’

  Ellie’s breath caught. That sounded awfully intimate. And he was standing pretty close. In the heartbeat before she remembered how hard she found physical contact, her body responded to his words with something that almost felt…sensual.

  You know…if it had been in anyone but her.

  The sun seemed to pick up momentum the further it sank.

  ‘See that opening down there?’ He pointed down into the void while they still had any light at all and she squinted her eyes to see what he meant. ‘One of the region’s biggest colonies of free-tailed bat roosts in there.’

  ‘It’s a long way down,’ she whispered, still transfixed by his closeness.

  ‘Not a problem. We’re not going to them…’

  Almost as he said the words she caught a momentary glimpse of a small black shape cutting across the stream of light coming from the SUV. She gasped. ‘Was that a bat?’

  ‘Keep watching.’

  A second black shape shot across the headlight beam. Then another. Then another. Crisscrossing the shaft of light like big, dark fireflies.

  ‘Those are scouts,’ he said, closer again to her ear. But the magic and mystery of the evening had taken hold. She forgot to be sensitive to his proximity.

  ‘What are they scouting for?’ she breathed.

  ‘To see if it’s safe.’

  ‘Safe for what?’

  She heard his smile in the warmth of his words. ‘For the colony to hunt.’

  And then it happened. A surge of small black shapes formed a wave and rose towards them from below. The raw sound of so many flapping wings made her think of a flood surge. She stumbled back, right into Jed. He held steady.

  ‘You’re safe, Ellie,’ he said, low into her ear so she could hear him. ‘They can navigate around individual blades of grass, they’re not going to have any problem missing us. Just let it happen.’

  Just let it happen.

  How many times had her soul cried back in dance training after her instructors promised her it would happen if she just let it come—the magical, otherworldly sensation of letting the dance completely take over. She watched it happen in her fellow dancers, she watched the joy on their faces, and she wanted it for herself.

  But no matter how her soul had bled it had never just happened for her.

  Just like the rest of her life.

  The bats drew closer, moving as a single body, and the first members flicked past her a little too close for comfort. She flinched away from them and reached behind her to curl Jed’s shirt in her anxious fingers.

  ‘You’re okay.’ His arms crossed down over her shoulders to keep her still. But nothing felt more unnatural than to stand here on the very edge of a precipice while a tsunami of wild creatures enveloped her. Every part of her wanted to rush back to the safety of the vehicle. Surely she could watch it from there?

  More bats whizzed past, and then more—the closest managing to miss the two of them by an inch, until she felt like they were being buffeted by a hurricane of tiny wings, whipping close enough to feel the tiny sting of disrupted air against her skin and hair but never actually touching her.

  The wave kept coming, thicker and deeper until the air around them seethed loudly with life.

  ‘There’s two million of them in there,’ Jed half shouted as the windstorm from twice that many wings hit her.

  The sheer scale of the life around them sent her senses spinning off into the dark sky. She felt small and insignificant against such a powerful collective mind, but safe and so very present.

  Two million creatures knew she was there. Two million creatures were taking care not to hurt her. Two million creatures were relying on her not to hurt them.

  Being frightened suddenly felt…kind of pointless. But she wasn’t ready to be alone up here.

  She slid her arms up between Jed’s still crossed over her and then ran her hands along his forearms until they curled neatly within his. His fingers threaded through hers and anchored there so that the two of them formed their own, primitive set of wings.

  Ellie carefully unfolded their joined limbs until they were stretched as wide as the bats’ must be. Still the tiny black shapes did nothing more than buffet them as they surged past a
nd up into the Texan dusk. She lifted her left arm—and Jed’s—and then her right, a flowing exploration, testing the bats’ sonar skills. They continued to miss her by the shallowest of breaths.

  Incredible lightness filled her body until she felt certain she could take lift on the bats’ air. She bent and swayed amidst the flurry of bats and closed her eyes to just feel the magnitude of the power in their numbers. Her hair whipped around her face, coming loose of its braid in the updraft caused by their exodus.

  Jed stepped back slightly and dropped her right hand.

  Anchored to him by her left, Ellie stepped ever closer to the drop of the ridge—ever closer to the tempest of tiny mammals coming over its lip—and she stretched her body up and out blindly, feeling the music of their flight, the melody in their subtle turns and shifts. Seeing the mass of bats as they each must: through their other senses.

  Twisting as the airborne fleet did felt the most natural and right thing in the world. She used Jed’s strong hold as a pivot and twisted under his arm in a slow, smooth pirouette as she’d done a thousand times onstage. But it had never felt this right onstage. Or this organic.

  This…perfect.

  She bent and she straightened and she moved with the flow of the bats—inside the flow—her eyes closed the whole time, predicting their intent in the mass of the flight. Being part of it.

  Was this it? Was this what real dancers experienced when they hit that special place where everything just came together? When they let their minds go and just felt? She was eternal. As old as the planet and as young as a baby taking its first breath. Every synapse in her body crackled with life.

  The whole time she was tethered to earth by Jed’s touch, by the warmth of the intense gaze she could practically feel against her skin.

  She danced. Sensual, swaying and shifting, and reaching out on the precipice, letting her body have its way.

  Finally, the density of the bats around her lessened, the flurry of their millions-strong zephyr dropped, the sounds of their flight faded. Until only the last few laggers whizzed past.

  And the only sound left was Ellie’s hard breathing.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  She stared out across the empty void of the dark Calhoun gully and felt the exhilaration slowly leach from her body. She missed it now that she’d finally—finally!—had a taste. But, deep down, her heart pulsed with joy that she was capable of feeling it at all. Utter sensual freedom. Infinite possibility.

  After a lifetime of believing otherwise.

  ‘Ellie?’ Jed was as breathless as she was.

  A dark heat surged through her and swamped the last vestiges of golden glow. What had she done? Dancing like that in front of a man who was virtually a stranger. It was like suddenly realising you were naked.

  But she was nothing if not resilient. She turned and used the move to twist her fingers out of his. Ready for his laughter.

  But he didn’t laugh; he stared at her, silent and grave. ‘That was—’

  ‘Not what you were expecting, I’m sure.’ She forced the levity into her words. Better to laugh first…

  ‘—amazing.’ His face didn’t change. His focus did not move. ‘I was going to say that was amazing.’

  She stared at him, searching for signs of condescension. ‘I just…’ What could she say? How did you explain one of the most moving moments in your life?

  ‘Why are you crying? Are you hurt?’

  Unsteady fingers shot to her cheeks. Sure enough, they were wet.

  ‘No.’ Not outwardly. ‘But that was—’ the most free she’d felt in her entire life ‘—so beautiful. So wild.’

  He stepped forward, arms open to comfort her, and she couldn’t help the learned response of her body. She flinched.

  Jed froze.

  His voice, when it came, was thick. ‘Is it being touched in general you don’t like…or is it just me?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE’D hurt him.

  After he’d done this amazing and lovely thing for her. After he’d not judged her at all this morning when she dumped her whole illness on him.

  ‘It’s not you.’ She shook her head, and golden strands flew all around her. Trembling hands went immediately to the destruction that was her carefully braided hair. Between the sideswipes of four million tiny bat wings and her own twisting and rolling, it was a complete wreck. She fumbled trying to tuck the largest strands back in.

  ‘Why don’t you just take it out?’

  Her eyes shot to his. As if she hadn’t made enough of a fool of herself tonight, getting freaky about her hair would be the final insult.

  ‘No, I’ll just…’ Her fingers moved more quickly, shoving and tucking, but it wasn’t easy, reinstating the prison after the freedom of just moments before.

  ‘Ellie…’ Jed’s hand slid up onto hers, stilled it. She forced herself not to snatch it away. ‘Don’t make it all perfect again. Don’t undo everything you just experienced.’

  She didn’t want to. Deep inside she longed to just let it loose, or leave it wild and shambolic like right now. ‘What must it look like…?’

  ‘It looks like you just took a ride in the rear of a World War Two fighter, or galloped hard across all of the Double Bar C.’ His eyes held hers, penetrating. ‘It looks good.’

  She stared at him, trapped in the intensity of his stare. His hand slipped off hers and slid down to the small band holding her braid in place. He closed his fingers over it but didn’t pull.

  He waited for her.

  She took a breath, still locked in his gaze and whispered, ‘I don’t wear it out.’

  ‘Why not? It’s beautiful. Amazing colour.’ He stroked the hair sticking out from under the band. For a bunch of dead skin cells they certainly came alive under his touch.

  Beautiful? Hardly. ‘It was a symptom…of my illness. For so long it was brittle.’ For so long she was too ashamed to let people see it. ‘And it fell out in patches.’

  ‘Not now,’ he assured her, slowly sliding the band down and curling it into his fingers as it slid off. ‘It’s healthy and strong. Like you are.’ He worked the bottom of the braid loose, his fingers gentle but a little bit clumsy. The braid unwound more.

  It was his clumsiness that stole her breath. It was his clumsiness that stilled her hands when she burned to disguise her shame and pull her hair back into a ponytail.

  He was as nervous as she was.

  For her this was a major step. What was his excuse?

  He let gravity do most of the work, but he helped it along by arranging her long tresses around her shoulders as the braid finally gave way completely.

  Ellie stood stiff and ready for some kind of reaction from him.

  ‘Why did you give up dance?’

  The unexpected question distracted her from the discordant sensation of having her hair unbound and free in front of someone.

  ‘What I saw just now…’ he continued, ‘and the fact you made yourself sick to be good at it. It makes me wonder why you’d give it up.’

  Tonight had been way too monumental for her to be able to retreat to her usual private shell. She was unravelled in more ways than one. She answered as honestly as she could, despite her very cells crying out for her not to.

  ‘Not eating was never really about dancing,’ she confessed, and then wondered where the heck she went next. Brown eyes just watched her. ‘But professional dancing was a good environment for a sickness like that to go unremarked. Everyone was hungry in those dressing rooms, everyone was lean, everyone was exhausted all the time.’ She felt it now, just for talking about it. The cell-deep fatigue they all danced through six days a week.

  ‘It certainly wasn’t conducive to me getting better, but I didn’t leave because of it.’

  ‘Then, why?’

  Her eyes dropped. Would he understand? Or would she just sound like the precious princess he thought she was? Only one way to find out.

  ‘Turns out the Patterson trust was a major be
nefactor of the company I danced for. My father donated six figures every year to it.’

  ‘So he was proud of what you did?’

  Her smile even felt token. ‘I traced his contribution back in the company’s annual reports. It started the year I was recruited.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Just before.’

  His eyes said more than any words could have.

  The old shame sat heavily on shoulders that had felt so light just minutes ago.

  ‘He bought you in?’

  ‘When I was feeling particularly glass half-full I’d imagine he saw how hard I was working and wanted me to feel validated.’

  ‘Did you?’

  She thought about that. ‘At first. It had been my dream for so long. But the harder I trained the further behind everyone else I slipped. The more I saw what they all had that I was missing.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Passion,’ she snorted. ‘Heart.’

  His eyes blazed. ‘I don’t believe that.’

  She tossed her head back. ‘Are you a regular at the ballet?’ Colour peeked out above his collar. ‘So trust me to know where I sat in the company food chain. I loved the logic and the certainty of choreography but I lacked spirit.’ Her breath shuddered in. ‘I made a great chorus member, but I was never going to be a principal.’

  ‘You threw it in because you didn’t get to be the star?’

  Even after just a few days she knew when he was being provocative for effect. He had to recognise by now how little she liked being the center of attention.

  She smiled. ‘No. But my father bought my spot. And I knew how many real dancers had earned it. Their chance. I decided to let one of them have it.’

  Angry colour crept up his neck. ‘You gave up your childhood for it. You gave up your health. Don’t tell me you hadn’t earned it.’

  ‘I didn’t want it all that much, it turned out.’ She shrugged. ‘It was everything I knew growing up, something I could excel at, something I could be technically proficient at. That proficiency probably would have kept me there until my body literally couldn’t do it but, in the end, I couldn’t face being reminded of my lack of passion every single day.’