Ryanne Corey - The Sheriff and The Amnesiac

She stood up abruptly, dressing in a clean pair of jeans and a rather wrinkled white cotton peasant shirt pulled from her duffel bag. Five minutes later her still-damp hair was curling wildly in the breeze as she walked across the street to the bowling alley. The night air had a bite to it; she made a mental note to buy herself a warm coat before she left town in the morning. She was thinking about making a little detour into Canada for a couple of weeks. She’d never been there before, and she’d heard it was an incredibly beautiful country. Originally she’d had vague plans of wandering down south to the warmer climes of New Mexico and visiting an artist’s colony she’d heard about, but she could always do that later. Plans were made to be broken, especially hers. Spending the night in Bride Falls on Her Head wasn’t the end of the world. She had to sleep somewhere, so there was no point getting all worked up about it.

Or that’s what she told herself. Still, it was hard to ignore the raw nerves prickling under her skin. Ordinarily Jenny found it easier to be indifferent than offended, but there was something about Tyler Cook that jarred her senses, making them unusually acute. He was somehow different from other people she had met. He stood out from the blurred, forgettable crowd. It might have been the power of his tantalizing features, his perception or his sense of the absurd, but somehow she knew he was a man to be reckoned with. Jenny had no interest in reckoning with any man. Besides, in some secret corner of her mind, she knew she would come up short in a confrontation with him. He’d proved it once already, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to do it again. No, she told herself. I won’t think about the square-jawed man with the devil in his blue eyes. And that’s the end of it.

She walked through the doors of the bowling alley into an explosion of light, laughter and deafening sound. The confusion and noise had a soothing effect on her, distracting her from her thoughts. She took a seat at the snack bar, a good vantage point from which to observe the good citizens of Bridal Veil Falls on a high-flying Friday night.

The lanes were all full, which didn’t really surprise her. There couldn’t be too much to do in a town this size. There were several teenage boys with their dates, a half dozen men in orange bowling shirts in league play and a few families bowling together. Everyone wore gosh-awful red-and-green bowling shoes. Jenny’s gaze skimmed the laughing children and parents without focusing on individuals. Years of long experience had taught her that some things were better avoided.

Still, there was something about the young family bowling in the nearest lane to her that caught and held her attention. Two chubby little boys wearing matching yellow sweatshirts and baggy, blue-striped shorts were working as a team, huffing and puffing as they lugged a heavy bowling ball halfway down the lane. There they dropped it into the gutter with a resounding thud and turned around to accept their parents’ applause. The little boys’ blue eyes were shining like sequins.

Twins.

Try as she might, Jenny was unable to tear her gaze away from those identical, adorable snub-nosed faces. They couldn’t be more than three or four years old. Their hair was the same white-blond shade as the young woman’s seated at the scoring desk—eye-catching and unusual.

Happy with their achievement, the little boys laughed and shuffled their way back to their seats in bowling shoes twice the size of their feet. Jenny saw that the laces were undone, dragging behind them on the ground. Their noses were both peeling with sunburn and each sported a Band-Aid on one knee. That was the way it was with twins. What happened to one always seemed to happen to the other.

No. Not always.

The inward voice cut through Jenny’s thoughts like the blade of a knife. She shivered, biting down hard on her lip. It was time to concentrate on something else, anything else, the first thing that came to mind…

“Tyler, double-knot their shoelaces, will you? They won’t stay tied.”

Hearing the instructions from the twins’ mommy, directed at the man sitting on the bench with his back to her, Jenny’s gaze stretched. The man had unmistakable hair, glittering with rainbow shades of dark gold and warm bronze. Unmistakable shoulders, filling out every inch of a well-washed blue chambray shirt. He slid off the bench, going down on one knee to tie shoelaces. Jenny saw a Greek god profile and a lean, law-abiding jaw. Unmistakably Sheriff Tyler Cook.

Good grief, he was the daddy. His resemblance to those little boys was amazing.

For a stunned moment Jenny couldn’t draw air into her lungs. It had never occurred to her that the irritating enforcer of the law might be married, though she couldn’t say exactly why. It might have been the way he teased her with those come-hither, beach-boy-blue eyes. Married men weren’t supposed to flirt. They weren’t supposed to smile the way he had smiled at her, showing off his boyish dimples and his cowboy country charm. He had deliberately misled her, that’s what he had done.

If looks could kill, Sheriff Cook would have met a nasty end right there on the paisley commercial carpeting at the Ritz Classic Bowl. He must have felt the daggers shooting into his back from the snack bar. He suddenly turned his head and looked directly at Jenny. She didn’t have time to turn away, she didn’t have time to compose her expression. They locked gazes, and he had the bloody nerve to send her one of his quizzical, blistering smiles. He saw her shock but showed absolutely no sign of embarrassment.

A single thought came to Jenny—there had been way too many intrusive emotions for one day. It was time to/turn off. She felt as if she were shrinking, separating from all the lights and noise around her, withdrawing into a well-guarded, secret cocoon. She shot off the bar stool as if it were made of red-hot coals. Hands pushed deep in her pockets, she plowed through the bowling alley with her determined gaze focused on the exit doors. Someone had spilled popcorn on the carpet; she could hear it crunching beneath her feet. Her peripheral vision caught a flash of blue as Tyler moved in her direction. Swallowing hard, she quickened her stride to a jog, but he caught up with her a good twenty feet before she reached the doors. Naturally. She had him pegged as the type who always got his man, even when his man was a woman.

He parked his tall body directly in front of her, putting an end to her flight for freedom. His smile was wide, brash and unabashedly cheerful. “If it isn’t my old friend, Trouble. This is about the last place I expected you to wander into.”

Jenny thought about his little family not fifty feet away, happy and oblivious to his true nature. Her blood simmered. “I’m sure it is. It must have been quite a surprise for you.”

“I like surprises,” he said. “I always have. That’s what makes ordinary life interesting—all the little, unexpected things. Besides, you just saved me a trip to the motel. I was about to go over and check on you. I had this nagging feeling you might try and skip town on me.” He put his hand on her arm to stop her as she tried to duck around him. “What’s your hurry? You seem awfully anxious to get through that door. I’m being nice. I haven’t tried to arrest you once.”

“The night is young,” Jenny muttered, using two fingers to remove his hand from her arm. “Don’t worry, Sheriff. I gave you my word that I’ll stick around until tomorrow morning, like a good little prisoner.”

“There’s that touching thing again,” Tyler commented, his mouth tucking thoughtfully to one side. “Is it just me you’re allergic to, or all human contact?”

She looked into this stranger’s eyes, rattled by the shadowed glimpse of compassion there. Insight, understanding, communication…she wasn’t interested in any of the above. Warning bells erupted in her head, much louder than the commotion of the bowling alley. She opened her mouth to toss back a careless, flippant remark—she was very good at that—but to her surprise, her mind remained stubbornly blank. Her fingers plucked restlessly at the gauzy fabric of her shirt, knowing that her momentary confusion was obvious.