Christyne Butler - The Sheriff's Secret Wife

He was so screwed.

Pushing away that thought, he opened his wallet and found the folded license he’d tucked there after leaving the bureau office, never really believing they’d use it. He shook it out, his eyes scanning the words.

“Well?”

Her one-word question held so much hope, a part of him hated to reply. His pride, however, was going to take a perverse sort of pleasure in it. “Sorry, Mrs. Steele. It seems as of two thirty-three this morning we’re actually hitched.”

Racy sank to the sofa, eyes wide with shock. His enjoyment of her distress drained away. He could see the idea of being married to him was turning her stomach.

She finally looked at him. “Gage, what are we going to do?”

“I can’t think straight without coffee and I’m hungry as a bear. We should concentrate on eating first.”

“How can you think about food at a time like this?” Racy shot to her feet and advanced on him. “This is crazy! You don’t want to be stuck with me and I sure as hell don’t want to be married to you.”

Okay, that was plain enough. “Racy—”

“We have to figure a way out of this. Can you imagine what the good citizens of Destiny would say if we showed up at home with matching rings?”

Yeah, it’d probably cover everything from “atta boy” to “I give it six months.”

“You hate me! You’ve felt that way since high school.”

“I don’t hate you.”

She snorted. “I’m not even worth that strong of an emotion, huh? Fine. Then you disapprove of me, of the way I live my life, of my family. Moonshining, drunk and disorderly, petty theft, drugs … first your father and then you took great pleasure in busting my brothers, making sure that last time they got the maximum jail sentence.”

“I was doing my job.”

“The night my father drove that rattrap pickup into a telephone pole, you were the first one to my place—”

“I didn’t want you to hear about it from anyone else.”

“No, you wanted to break me … again. You wanted to see me cry over the fact my sorry excuse of a husband and my daddy were so drunk it wasn’t the crash that killed them, but the both of them walking in front of an eighteen-wheeler an hour later.”

“Yeah, you were so brokenhearted you didn’t shed a tear.”

She paused and swallowed hard. “I don’t cry for anyone. Not anymore.”

Before he could respond, a discreet knock came at the door. Racy marched across the room. She flung open the door and waved the uniformed waiter and his cart inside.

“Any place you’d like this?” the young kid asked with a polite smile. “The terrace is a favorite among our guests.”

Gage glanced at the glass doors at the other end of the suite. Racy and him in the open air thirty stories above the ground? Not on your life. “Ah, here is fine.”

He opened his wallet, but Racy snatched the bill from the cart, scratched her name on the paper inside the leather case and handed it to the waiter. “It’s my suite. I’m paying.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The waiter retreated to the doors. “Thank you, ma’am.” He disappeared, closing the door behind him.

Gage grabbed two chairs from the nearby dining table and shoved them on either side of the cart. The aroma coming from beneath the silver domes made his mouth water. He still felt like crap, but a hearty breakfast the morning after always did wonders for him. “Come on, sit.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Fine.” Gage sat. He needed coffee. Strong, black and right now. “Stand and eat. I really don’t care.”

“Gage—”

“Look, we both agree we need to figure out a way to fix this—”

“And keep it a secret.” Racy cut him off. “I don’t want anyone to know how stupid I—how stupid we both were last night.”

The coffee burned on its way down his throat, but it was no more scorching than her words. Why it bothered him, he didn’t want to think about. He should’ve known last night hadn’t changed anything. The warm and fun-loving woman he’d held in his arms was an illusion.

Reality was standing right here in front of him.

“I’ll call the concierge. We can’t be the first couple to have morning-after regrets.” Gage set aside the domes with a loud clang and reached for a fork. “What’s that saying, ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’?”

The sight of a gold-and-diamond band shoved under his nose stopped the fork midway to his mouth. He looked up, but with her chin dropped, Racy’s hair covered her face.

“What are you doing?”

“Here. Take it.”

“You bought it.”

“I don’t care.” She shook her head, dropping the ring into the water goblet next to his plate. It slowly sunk past the floating ice cubes to rest at the bottom. “I don’t want it. Toss it, leave it for the maid … it doesn’t matter to me.”

She grabbed the apple juice from the cart, her fingers gripping the glass, but it still sloshed over the rim as she headed across the suite. Seconds later, the bathroom door slammed closed behind her.

Gage rose and started after her, stopping when he heard the sound of rushing water. The mental image of his wife in the oversize glass shower, water jets pulsating against her peaches-and-cream skin, had his lower half instantly responding.

He jammed his fingers through his hair, his gaze catching on the gold band on his left hand. Tugging off the ring, he tossed it toward the cart, watching it make a perfect arc to join Racy’s in the water glass with a splash.

She wasn’t his wife. In a matter of hours she wouldn’t even be his ex-wife. What did one call a former spouse after an annulment?

A mistake, that’s what.

Last week of January …

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“There’s no need to swear. Do I have to repeat myself?”

Gage stared at his little sister. Okay, not so little, but still younger than him by a decade, sitting on the other side of the aged desk that had once belonged to their father. She’d appeared in his office early this cold Saturday morning to announce she’d gotten a job. At a bar, of all places.

And not just any bar, Racy’s bar.

“Yes.”

“Racy hired me last night to work at The Blue Creek.”

“I was at The Blue Creek last night. I didn’t see you.” Gage refused to concede how just the sound of her name got his blood racing. Damn the woman! What had she done now?

“Well, I was there and I didn’t see you.”

“I stop in most nights to make sure everything is okay.”

“Yes, I can see how the big, bad sheriff waving around his badge would keep everyone on the straight and narrow.”

“I stay out of sight and I don’t wave—” Gage pulled in a deep breath. He slowly released it and dropped his mail to his desk, his attention fully on his sister. “Gina, what are you doing? You’ve got two degrees, one of which is a master’s.”

“For all the good it did me in the real world.”

The pain in his sister’s voice was evident. When she’d arrived home from England just before Thanksgiving, he’d known something was wrong. Even Gina couldn’t finish a year-long fellowship in less than three months.

“Think I’m a bit overqualified to work in a bar?”

“Yes.”

“Or is it I’m not pretty enough?”

Where in the hell had that come from?

Gage studied the rigid set of his sister’s shoulders. Her sheepskin-lined denim jacket had once belonged to their father. With her curly hair pulled back in its usual ponytail and her gold-framed glasses, she could pass for a high school classmate of their younger sister, Giselle.