Tara Quinn - The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

“So you didn’t date for ten years?” The superfluous words were probably all wrong, but what else could she ask?

“I dated,” Greg answered with a dim version of the grin he’d given her earlier. But he looked relieved, too, to have been rescued from whatever thoughts had been hounding him. “I just couldn’t find a woman willing to take on a paraplegic senior citizen.”

And Greg was not a man who would put his father in a full-time care facility unless there was no other choice.

Beth had never wished more than she did in that moment that she was free to like this man—and maybe let something develop between them. Something more than liking…

DR. PETER STERLING and Houston prosecuting attorney James Silverman faced each other in the elegantly furnished waiting room of Sterling Silver Spa, in the newly incorporated town of Sterling Silver, Texas. The spa’s last client had just left for the evening.

“Damn, it’s hot.” Dr. Sterling pulled at the collar of his pristine white shirt. He’d just walked over from visiting a new resident in the apartment complex a couple of blocks away. “August has got to be the worst month of the year.”

Silverman didn’t agree. He thought January’s cold was pretty miserable. But it wasn’t worth an argument to say so. Loosening his tie, he unfastened the top button of his dress shirt. How did Sterling do it? Just keep going every day, always looking perfect?

Didn’t the man ever get tired?

And what did it say about Silverman that he was damn exhausted?

“It’s time to hire someone new,” Sterling said, his eyes black points of steel as they pinned Silverman. “Winters isn’t working out. We should’ve heard something by now.”

“I know.” James undid a second button. He’d been unhappy with the private investigator for weeks. But he didn’t know whom he could trust. There was too much at stake.

“Every day that goes by puts us all in more jeopardy.”

“I know.”

“We can’t think only of ourselves,” Sterling reminded him, as he did in just about every conversation the two men had these days. “We have many, many good people relying on us.”

“I know.” No one knew that better than James Silverman. He didn’t need Sterling reminding him, pressuring him. He carried the burden of his mistake every waking—and sleeping—moment of his life.

He wasn’t going to fail his new family, his friends. If nothing else, he believed in the cause. In them. He might have lost his faith in most things, but he still believed in a better tomorrow, a world free of negative energy and aggression.

They’d worked too hard, for too long, and come too far to let a traitor ruin everything for them now.

“Beth’s dangerous.”

“Yes.” James felt sick.

“There’s no telling what she’s capable of.”

Silverman nodded.

“She has to be stopped,” Sterling said, his voice colder than any of his patients had ever heard. “At all costs.”

“I know.”

Satisfied, Sterling got to his feet. The meeting was over.

“We’ll get through this together,” he said, his tone softer. “Together we always find the cure, don’t we?”

James nodded, more because it was expected of him than because he was in a trusting mood that night. As he locked up, he wondered if the doctor’s cures were losing their effectiveness. For him, anyway… And that made Beth’s defection more dangerous than ever.

AS HE LOCKED THE DOOR of his office, Greg thought about how he couldn’t lock away the impressions that continued to bombard him. There were puzzle pieces that definitely fit together—as clearly as the myriad jigsaws he’d worked on over the years. If only he could figure out how… Culver was right, there’d been many carjackings in the past ten years. No reason to believe that this year’s series had anything to do with the ones that had happened ten years ago. Except that in both cases, there had been a series.

Of course, Burt was also right in his claim that the occurrences near the border had been a series, too.

But…

The pieces floated in and out, settling, moving around, changing location without offering him a single answer.

He was outside Beth’s nondescript apartment on one of the older streets in Shelter Valley. Greg chuckled to himself. Considering where he was, his thoughts seemed fitting. Because, judging by past experience, he wasn’t going to find out any of the hundred things he wanted to know here, either.

And just as he did with any other puzzle, he kept looking at all the pieces. Turning them this way and that, trying to fit them here or there to create the whole picture. When something mattered enough, when the feeling was strong enough, there wasn’t any other choice.

“Greg. Hi.” It wasn’t the most welcoming tone as Beth opened her door to him that Wednesday night. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since she’d left his sister’s right after dessert, late Sunday afternoon.

She’d blamed her early departure on Ryan’s grumpiness on waking, but Greg wasn’t convinced that was the only reason.

Maybe he should’ve taken time this afternoon to stop at home and change out of his uniform.

“I knew that if I asked you to dinner or a movie—or anything else, for that matter—you’d say no, so I decided to just come by.”

Face softening, though not quite into a smile, Beth leaned against the door. She was wearing a black tank top and black sweats cut off just below the knee. One of the sexiest outfits he’d ever seen.

“If you know I don’t want to go out with you, why bother?” she asked.

She hadn’t shut the door. Nor did her question seem nearly as off-putting as it could’ve been. As a matter of fact, she sounded curious.

Good.

“I don’t think we’ve established that you don’t want to go out with me. Only that you’d say no if I asked.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

Glad he’d come, Greg shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He paused, pretending to consider. “Nope, not at all.”

She straightened. “Well, it seems like the same thing to me,” she said.

She’d tensed again.

“It would be a good idea to ask me in,” Greg said quickly, before she had a chance to dismiss him. “You know, before the neighbors see a uniformed officer at your door and start to talk.”

Beth grinned, looking out at the street in front of her house where he’d left his car. “Oh yeah, like that thing with the big ‘Sheriff’ emblazoned on the side isn’t going to raise any suspicion?”

“Hell, no.” He grinned, too, hands in his pockets as he stood his ground. “They’ll just think the sheriff’s sweet on you.”

“And that won’t cause talk?”

“Well, not the kind I was referring to. You know, the kind where everyone whispers about the possible secret life you’re living and they start to weave fantasies about bank robberies or jewel thefts and lock their windows and doors at night and give you a wide berth anytime they run into you at the grocery store.”

“Oh, that.” Beth started to pale at the ridiculous situation he was describing, but then she laughed. “Yeah, that’s about as likely as the sheriff being sweet on me.”

“I sure hope not,” he said, almost under his breath. And then wished he hadn’t. That was good for a slammed door in his face.

Because he didn’t know what else to do, Greg met her eyes. And that was when it always happened with them. From the first time he’d met her, he’d recognized something in that deep blue gaze. And until he knew what it was, what it meant, he had to keep coming back.

She didn’t shut him out or close the door.

“May I come in?”