Читать книгу Slow Dance with the Sheriff - Никки Логан - Страница 10

GIVEN how many five-star hotels Ellie had stayed in, it was ridiculous to think that she’d just had one of the best sleeps of her life in a converted hayloft.

She burrowed down deeper into the soft quilt and took herself through the pros and cons of just sleeping all day.

Pro: she wasn’t expected anywhere.

Pro: she wouldn’t be missed by anyone. No one would know but her; and possibly the sheriff, although he’d almost certainly be out doing sheriffly duties.

When was the last time she just lay in? While all her classmates were keeping teenage hours, she’d spent every waking moment perfecting her steps, or doing strength training or studying the masters. Even when she was sick she used to force herself up, find something constructive to do. Anything that meant she wasn’t indulging her body.

Now look at her. Twelve hours’ rest behind her and quite prepared to go back for another three.

What had she become?

Her deep, powerful desire to pull the blankets over her head and never come out was only beaten by the strength of her determination not to. She hurled back the toasty warm covers and let the bracing Texan morning in with her, and her near-naked flesh protested with a thousand tiny bumps. Even the biggest log she’d found in the woodpile couldn’t last this long and so the little room was as cold as…well, an old barn. Bad enough that she’d broken a cardinal rule and gone to bed without eating anything, she’d stripped out of her clothes and just crawled into bed in panties only, too tired to even forage amongst her belongings for her pajamas.

More sloth!

She pulled one of the blankets up around her shoulders and tiptoed over to her suitcases, the timber floor of the raised loft creaking under her slight weight. The sound reminded her of the flex and give in the dance floor of the rehearsal studio and brought a long-distance kind of comfort. They may have been hard years but they were also her childhood. She rummaged to the bottom of one case for socks and a T-shirt and dragged them on, then slid into her jeans from yesterday, her loose hair caressing her face.

No doubt, the people of Larkville had been up before dawn—doing whatever it was that country folk did until the sun came up. There was no good reason she shouldn’t be up, too. She looped a scrunchie over her wrist, pulled the bedspread into tidy order, surrendered her toasty blanket and laid it neatly back where it belonged, then turned for the steps.

Downstairs didn’t have the benefit of rising heat and it had the decided non-benefit of original old-brick flooring so it was even chillier than the loft. It wasn’t worth going to all the trouble of lighting the fire for the few short hours until it got Texas warm. Right behind that she realised she had no idea what the day’s weather would bring. Back home, she’d step out onto her balcony and look out over the skyline to guess what kind of conditions Manhattan was in for, but here she’d have to sprint out onto the pavement where she could look up into the sky and take a stab at what the day had in store.

She pulled on the runners she’d left by the sofa, started to shape her hair into a ponytail, hauled open the big timber door…and just about tripped over the uniformed man crouched there leaving a box on her doorstep.

‘Oh—!’

Two pale eyes looked as startled as she felt and the sheriff caught her before momentum flipped her clean over him. All at once she became aware of two things: first, she wasn’t fully dressed and, worse, her hair was still flying loose.

Having actual breasts after so many years of not having them at all was still hard to get used to and slipping them into lace was never the first thing she did in the morning. Not that what she had now would be of much interest to any but the most pubescent of boys but she still didn’t want them pointing at Sheriff Jed Jackson in the frosty morning air.

But even more urgent… Her hair was down.

Ellie steadied herself on Jed’s shoulders as he straightened and she stepped back into the barn, tucking herself more modestly behind its door. She abandoned her discomfort about her lack of proper clothing in favour of hauling her hair into a quick bunch and twisting the scrunchie around it three brutal times. That unfortunately served to thrust her chest more obviously in the sheriff’s direction but if it was a choice between her unashamedly frost-tightened nipples and her still-recovering hair, she’d opt for the eyeful any day.

Of the many abuses her undernourished body had endured in the past, losing fistfuls of brittle hair was the most lingering and shameful.

She never wore it loose in public. Not then. Not even now, years after her recovery.

Jed’s eyes finally decided it was safe to find hers, though he seemed as speechless as she was.

‘Good morning, Sheriff.’ She forced air through her lips, but it didn’t come out half as poised as she might have hoped. The wobble gave her away.

‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he muttered. Four tiny lines splayed out between his dark eyebrows and he glanced down to the box at his feet. ‘I brought supplies.’

She dropped her gaze and finally absorbed the box’s contents. Milk, fruit, bread, eggs, half a ham leg. Her whole body shrivelled—the habit of years. It was more than just supplies, it was a Thanksgiving feast. To a Texan that was probably a starter pack, but what he’d brought would last her weeks.

‘Thank you.’ She dug deep into her chatting-with-strangers repertoire for some lightness to cover the moment. ‘Cattle mustering, fire lighting and now deliveries. County sheriffs sure have a broad job description.’

His lips tightened. ‘Sure do. In between the road deaths and burglaries and domestic violence.’

She winced internally. Why did every word out of her mouth end up belittling him?

But he moved the conversation smoothly on. ‘You were heading out?’

‘No, I just wanted to see the sky.’ That put a complex little question mark in his expression. ‘To check the weather,’ she added.

‘You know we get the Weather Channel in Texas, right?’

Of course she knew that. But she’d been trusting her own instincts regarding the weather for years. On the whole she was right more often than the experts. ‘Right, but I’d rather see it for myself.’

Wow, did she sound as much of a control freak as she feared?

His stare intensified. ‘As it happens, meteorology is also on my job description. Today will be fine and eighty-two degrees.’

Ellie couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting upwards to the streak of cloud front visible between the overhanging eaves of the two buildings.

He didn’t look surprised. If anything, he looked disappointed. ‘You really don’t trust anyone but yourself, huh?’

She lifted her chin and met his criticism. ‘It smells like rain.’

He snorted. ‘I don’t think so, Manhattan. We’ve been in drought for months.’

He might as well have patted her on the head. He bent and retrieved the box, then looked expectantly towards her little kitchenette. No way on earth she was letting him back in here until she was fully and properly dressed and every hair was in its rightful place. She took a deep breath, stepped out from behind the door and extended her arms for the box.

‘It’s heavy…’ he warned.

‘Try me,’ she countered.

Another man might have argued. The sheriff just plonked the box unceremoniously into her arms. It was hard to know if that reflected his confidence in her ability or some twisted desire to see her fail.

She fixed her expression, shifted her feet just slightly and let her spine take the full brunt of the heavy supplies. It didn’t fail her. You don’t dance for twelve years without building up a pretty decent core strength. Just for good measure she didn’t rush the box straight over to the counter and, since it was doing a pretty good job of preserving her modesty, she had no real urgency. ‘Okay, well… Thanks again.’

B’bye now.

He didn’t look fooled. Or chagrined. If anything, he looked amused. Like he knew exactly what she was doing. The corners of that gorgeous mouth kicked up just slightly. He flicked his index finger at the brim of his sheriff’s hat in farewell and turned to walk away.

She could have closed the door and heaved the box over to the kitchen. She probably should have done that. But instead she made herself take its weight a little longer, and she watched him saunter up the pathway towards his SUV, law-enforcement accoutrements hanging off both sides of his hips, lending a sexy kind of emphasis to the loping motion of his strong legs.

Then, just as he hit the sidewalk—just as she convinced herself he wasn’t going to—he turned and glanced back down the lane and smiled like he knew all along that she was still watching. Though it nearly killed her arms to do it, she even managed to return his brief salute by lifting three fingers off her death grip on the heavy box in a faux-casual farewell flick.

Then she kicked the door shut between them and hurried to the counter before she had fruit and ham and eggs splattered all over her chilly barn floor.

Jed slid in beside Deputy and waited until the tinted window of his driver’s door was one hundred per cent closed before he let himself release his breath on a long, slow hiss.

Okay…

So…

His little self-pep talk last night amounted to exactly nothing this morning. One look at Little Miss Rumpled Independence and he was right back to wanting to muscle his way into that barn and never leave. No matter how contrary she was. In fact, maybe because she was so contrary.

And, boy, was she ever. She would have hefted all one hundred and twenty pounds of Deputy and held him in her slender arms if he suggested she couldn’t.

But she had done it. Thank goodness, too, because a man could only stare at the wall so long to avoid staring somewhere infinitely less appropriate. It wasn’t her fault he’d had a flash of conscience while jogging at 6:00 a.m. about how empty the refrigerator in his barn conversion was. Her mortification at being caught unprepared for company was totally genuine.

So she might be snappish and belligerent, but she wasn’t some kind of exhibitionist.

Which meant she was only two parts like Maggie, he thought as he pulled the SUV out into the quiet street. Maggie and her sexual confidence had him twisted up in so many knots he could barely see straight by the time she’d worn him down. It was never his plan to date someone in his own department but it was certainly her plan and Maggie was nothing if not determined.

But he was practically a different man back then. A boy. He’d taken that legacy scholarship straight out of school and gone to the Big Smoke to reinvent himself and he’d done a bang-up job.

He just wished he could have become a man that he liked a little bit more.

Still…done was done. He walked away from the NYPD after fifteen years with a bunch of salvaged scruples, a firm set of rules about relationships and a front seat full of canine squad flunky.

Not a bad starting point for his third try at life.

One block ahead he saw Danny McGovern’s battered pickup shoot a red intersection and he reached automatically for the switch for his roof lights. Pulling traffic was just a tiny bit too close to Ellie Patterson’s jibe about the kinds of low-end tasks she’d seen him run as sheriff but, if he didn’t do it, then that damned kid was going to run every light between Larkville and Austin and, eventually, get himself killed.

And since one of those fine scruples he’d blown his other life to pieces over involved protection of hotshot dumb-asses like McGovern, he figured he owed it to himself to at least try. He’d been negligent enough with the lives of others for one lifetime.

His finger connected with the activation switch and a sequenced flash of red and blue lit the waking streets.

Time to get to work.