Tara Quinn - The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

“So what time would that be?”

Beth glanced at her watch—not that it was going to tell her what jobs she had left or how long they would take. “Within the hour.” She was due to pick Ryan up from the Willises at five.

Ryan couldn’t be enrolled in the day care in town. Not only was Beth living a lie, without even a social security number, but she couldn’t take a chance on signing any official papers that might allow someone to trace her.

Especially when she had no idea who that someone might be.

So she left the toddler with two elderly sisters, Ethel and Myra Willis, who adored him. And she only accepted cash from her clients.

“How does an early dinner sound?”

That inexplicable headiness hadn’t left her since she’d answered the door. “With you?” she asked, stalling, putting off the moment when she had to refuse.

He nodded, the movement subtly incorporating his entire body. It was one of the things that kept Greg on her mind long after she’d run into him someplace or other—the way he put all of himself into everything he did. You had to be sincere to be able to do that consistently.

“I have to feed Ryan,” she said, only because it was more palatable than an outright no. It still meant no.

Pulling a hand from his pocket, he turned it palm upward. “The diner serves kids.”

Beth’s eyes were automatically drawn to that hand and beyond, to the pocket it had left. And from there to the heavy-looking gun in a black leather holster at his hip.

“Ry’s not good in restaurants.” Her mouth dry, Beth knew she had to stop. Too much was at stake.

Yet she liked to think she was starting a new life. And if she was, she wanted this man in it.

If he weren’t a cop. And if she weren’t afraid she was on the run from something pretty damn horrible. If she were certain she could trust him, no matter who she might turn out to be, no matter what she might have done.

“He’s two,” Greg said. “He’ll learn.”

“I have no doubt he will, but I’d rather get him over the food-throwing stage in private.”

Greg stared down at his feet, shod, as usual, in freshly shined black wing tips. “In all the months I’ve known you, I’ve never done one thing to give you reason to doubt me, but you always brush me off,” he said eventually.

“No, I…” Beth stopped. “Okay, yes, I am.”

“Is it my breath?”

“No!” She chuckled, relaxing for just a second. With the truth out in the open, the immediate danger was gone.

“My hair? You don’t like black hair?” He was grinning at her, and somehow that little bit of humor was more devastating than his earlier intensity.

“I like black just fine. Tom Cruise has black hair.”

“Dark brown. Tom Cruise has dark brown hair. And he’s the reason you’ve come up with an excuse every single time I’ve asked you out?”

“No.”

“It’s the curls, then? You don’t like men with curls?”

“I love your curls.” Oh God. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her throat started to close up again. She couldn’t do this.

And she couldn’t not do this. Beth’s emotional well had been bone-dry for so long she sometimes feared it was beginning to crumble into nothingness. She had no one else sharing her life—her fears and worries and pains; worse, she didn’t really even have herself. She was living with a stranger in her own mind.

“Ryan has curls,” she finished lamely.

Greg’s expression grew serious. “Is it the cop thing? I know a lot of women don’t want to be involved with cops. Understandably so.”

His guess was dead right, but not in the way he meant. “I’m not one of them,” she said, compelled to be honest with him. About this, at least. “I’d consider myself lucky to be involved with a man who’d dedicated his life to helping others. A man who put the safety of others before his own. One who still had enough faith in society to believe it’s worth saving.”

“Even though you’d know, every morning when you kissed him goodbye as he left for work, that you might never see him again?”

“Every woman—and man—faces that danger,” she said. “I’ll bet that far more people die in car accidents than on the job working as a cop.”

“Far more,” he agreed.

“And, anyway,” she said, feeling a sudden urge to close the door, “who said anything about kissing every morning?”

“I was hoping I’d been able to slide that one by you,” he said.

“Nope.”

“So—” his gaze became challenging “—if it’s not the cop thing and it’s not my breath, it must be you that you’re afraid of.”

“I am not afraid.”

He sobered. “If you need more time, Beth, I certainly understand. We could grab a sandwich as friends, maybe see a movie or something.”

More time? She frowned.

“It’s been—what?—less than a year since you were widowed?” he asked, his face softening.

Widowed. Oh yeah, that. It was the story she’d invented when she’d come to town. She was a recent widow attempting to start a new life. You’d think she could at least manage to keep track of the life she’d made up to replace the one she couldn’t remember.

“Look,” she said, really needing to get back to work. Ry was going to be looking for her soon. Routine was of vital importance to her little boy. “If you were serious about the friend thing, I could use some help.”

She was testing him. And felt bad about that. But not bad enough to stop herself, apparently.

“Sure.”

“I just bought a used apartment-size washer and dryer.” Taking a two-year-old’s two and three changes a day to the Laundromat had been about to kill her—financially and physically. “I need someone with a truck to go with me to pick it up and then help me get it into the duplex.”

He’d know where she lived, then. But who was she kidding? He was the county sheriff—a powerful man. And Shelter Valley was a small town. He’d probably known where she lived for months.

“I have a truck.”

“I know.”

She’d passed him in town a couple of times, feeling small and insignificant in the old, primer-spattered Ford Granada she’d bought for five-hundred dollars next to his beautiful brand-new blue Ford F-150 Supercab.

“If I offer to help are you going to brush me off again?”

“No.”

“You aren’t just setting me up here?” He was smiling.

“No!” Beth said indignantly, but she was smiling, too.

“I’m tempted to force you to ask, just to win back a little bit of the pride you’ve been quietly stripping away for months. But because I’m afraid to chance it, I’ll ask you, instead. May I please help you bring your new appliances home?”

Beth laughed out loud…and was shocked by the sound. She couldn’t remember having heard it before. Couldn’t remember anything before waking up in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with bruises and a child who called her Mama crying on the bed beside her.

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind, I could sure use the help,” she said, all laughter gone. She had no business even thinking about flirting with the county sheriff, but she and Ryan needed those appliances. And she couldn’t get them to the duplex alone.

“What time?”

“Tonight? After dinner?”

“Sure we couldn’t do it before dinner and just happen to eat while we’re at it?”

“I’m sure.”

Beth hated the conflicting emotions she felt when he gave in with no further cajoling and agreed to pick her up at six-thirty that evening for the ten-minute drive out to the Andersons’. They were remodeling the one-room apartment over their garage and no longer needed the appliances, which, while five years old, had hardly been used.