Christyne Butler - Welcome Home, Bobby Winslow

No, that’s not true.

Three months ago she, Racy and Maggie had gone away for a girls’ weekend at a spa in Jackson Hole. After a day filled with massages, facials and body wraps and a couple shared bottles of wine later by the fire, she’d finally disclosed to her best friends in the world her deepest secret.

Telling them hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought it would be. They were very sweet and supportive, and Leeann now realized the restlessness she’d been feeling had started after that trip, despite her believing she’d truly moved on from the past.

Until last night.

Until Bobby had come back to town.

“Don’t blame him. Your thoughts are your own. Your actions are your own.” She spoke aloud her familiar mantra while dropping into a deep lunging stretch. Planting her hands midthigh, she lowered her forehead to her knee. “Your decisions are you own.”

“Words to live by.”

The male voice caused Leeann to jerk upright; the sudden movement sent her stumbling backward. She lost her balance and ended up on her backside in the damp grass.

“Jeez, me and my big mouth.” Bobby made his way toward her, leaning heavily on a cane. “Here, let me help—”

“Stop.” Leeann scrambled to her feet, holding out one hand. “I’m up. I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

Bobby slowed but continued walking. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t.”

Conscious of her bare arms and abs thanks to the cropped tank top she wore that was nothing more than a fancy sports bra, Leeann moved past him to grab her jacket and yank it on. “What are you doing down here?”

He faced her. “I could ask you the same thing.”

She righted her ball cap without removing it, but still met his gaze. “I own this land.”

“And I own the road you used to get to this land.”

Leeann tried not to stare as Bobby leaned slightly to his left, obviously favoring one leg as he gripped the carved head of his cane. Something he hadn’t used yesterday when she’d ordered him out of his camper. “How did you even know I was—wait, you have a security system.”

“Does that surprise you?”

No, it didn’t. Not with the multimillion-dollar home he had built on the land adjacent to hers.

“There isn’t an access road from the main highway to the pond,” she explained. “I used your driveway, but I turned off just before the gate.”

“Yeah, I saw the images.”

This had to have been less than fifteen minutes ago.

Then he’d come here, using the path only the two of them had known about, the path she’d used all those years ago when she’d lived in a big house up on that same hill.

Memories of the times the two of them spent here together rushed back to her. Times they shrieked with laughter while splashing around in the icy water on a hot summer day, when she’d helped him understand the complexity of calculus, or the many times he’d held her close as she cried over yet another fight with her mother.

The time they’d fumbled through the unknown yet passion-filled moments of making love for the first time in a sleeping bag beneath a star-filled sky.

Leeann forced herself back to the present. She and Bobby were strangers to each other now.

“What are you thinking about?” He leaned forward, his gaze roaming from her head to her toes.

Just like he’d done yesterday. And like yesterday, her body responded with a heated flush she quickly blamed on her run.

“What—nothing.” She took another step backward, an automatic reaction she had drilled into her head whenever anyone invaded her physical space.

“You do realize your face still gives away your thoughts?”

Only with him.

She’d learned over the years, first with her parents and then in New York, how to put on a false face, to pretend an emotion that didn’t exist. Then later, she’d used that same skill at the police academy to prove to her instructors and fellow cadets she was more than just her looks.

Even here in Destiny among her former coworkers and friends, she worked hard to earn a reputation for having unflappable composure.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pulled the brim of her cap lower over her eyes and turned away, her gaze on the still waters of her pond.

“Why’d you cut your hair?”

His simple question had her spinning back to look at him. The sun on his face made it hard for her to see his eyes. Was he laughing at her?

“I think that’s why it took me so long to recognize you yesterday, that and the uniform.” Bobby switched his cane from one hand to the other. “You always vowed you’d never cut your hair. Was it because of your job?”

“Huh?”

“Were you required to cut it when you became a cop?”

Dull kitchen scissors. Piles of knotted and tangled unwashed hair littering her lap and the gleaming hardwood floor beneath her. Frantic pounding on the door. Loud clicks of the locks releasing. The shock on her aunt’s face when she found her sitting there—

Years of practice allowed her to shut down the memory.

“A deputy sheriff—” she corrected him, her voice barely a whisper. Pulling in a deep breath, she cleared her throat and answered his question. “And no, I cut my hair long before I went to the police academy.”

“After you up and disappeared from your glamorous life in New York?”

He knew about that? Not that her career in high fashion was a secret, nor was her sudden retirement.

At one time she’d been one of the highest-paid models on the circuit with either her face or body gracing a different magazine every month. She’d split her time between New York, Paris and Milan, walking more than a million miles on the runway and posing for a hundred different shots in the quest for the perfect angle, the perfect composition, until that one day when she’d been too perfect and paid a horrible price.

Bobby tilted his head to one side and Leeann realized he was waiting for an answer. “What was your question?”

“Did you cut your hair after you left New York?”

Technically, no, but thanks to her aunt she’d left the city the same night she’d hacked off the horrific reminder of what that maniac had done—

“Yes.”

“So …” He dragged out the word, and tilted his head in the other direction. “How long have you been deputy sheriff?”

“Three years.”

Bobby sighed. “You know, this would go a lot better if you gave me more than one- or two-word answers.”

Crossing her arms over her chest was a purely defensive move, but she did it anyway. “What would?”

“Catching up. Getting to know each other again. It has been a few years since we’ve talked.”

Fourteen years to be exact, but between the memories and his cutting remark from yesterday, she was quickly turning into a swirling mass of hurt and confusion, and she hated that. “Funny, I was under the impression you’re not interested in anything I have to say.”

That shut him up.

“What? No quick comeback?” She dropped her arms, suddenly very tired. “You didn’t seem to have a problem putting me in my place yesterday. You must be losing your touch.”

“I’m sorry, Lee.” Bobby ran his fingers through his hair, pushing the dark strands off his face. He swayed for a moment, but adjusted his stance and kept talking. “I was a jerk and I can’t even give you a good reason why. Zip and I had been on the road for over a week. I was in pain from sitting for twelve hours, pushing us to get here. Then of all the people to run into, barely over the county line … hell, maybe I am trying to give you a reason.”

His quiet words surprised her, causing Leeann to look at him, really look at him, seeing for the first time the tension in the lines around his mouth, the stiffness in his upper body.