Читать книгу Slow Dance with the Sheriff - Никки Логан - Страница 8

SHERIFF JED JACKSON eased down on the brake and slid one arm across to stop his deputy sliding off the front seat.

‘Well,’ he muttered to the grizzly bear of a dog who cocked an ear in response, ‘there’s something you don’t see every day.’

A sea of loose steer spilled across the long, empty road out to the Double Bar C, their number swollen fence-to-fence to seal off the single lane accessway, all standing staring at one another, waiting for someone else to take the lead. That wasn’t the unusual part; loose cattle were common in these parts.

He squinted out his windscreen. ‘What do you reckon she’s doing?’

Adrift right in the middle of the massing herd, standing out white in a sea of brown hide, was a luxury sedan, and on its roof—standing out blue in a sea of white lacquer—was a lone female.

Jed’s mouth twitched. Ten-fifty-fours weren’t usually this entertaining, or this sizeable. This road didn’t see much traffic, especially not with the Calhouns away, but a herd of cattle really couldn’t spend the night here. His eyes lifted again to the damsel in distress, still standing high and dry with her back to him, waving her hands shouting uselessly at the cattle.

And clearly she couldn’t.

He radioed dispatch and asked them to advise the Calhoun ranch of a fence breach, then he eased his foot off the brake and edged closer to the comical scene. The steer that weren’t staring at one another looked up at the woman expectantly.

He pulled on the handbrake. ‘Stay.’

Deputy looked disappointed but slouched back into the passenger seat, his enormous tongue lolling. Jed slid his hat on and slipped out the SUV’s door, leaving it gaping. The steer didn’t even blink at his arrival they were so fixated on the woman perched high above them.

Not entirely without reason.

That was a mighty fine pair of legs tucked into tight denim and spread into a sturdy A-shape. Not baggy denim, not the loose, hanging-low-enough-to-trip-on, did-someone-outlaw-belts, de-feminising denim.

Fitted, faded, snug. As God intended jeans to be.

Down at ground level, the length of her legs and the peach of a rear topping them wouldn’t have been all that gratuitous but, from his steer-eye view, her short blouse didn’t do much to offset, either.

The moaning of the cattle had done a good job disguising his arrival but it was time to come clean. He pushed his hat back with a finger to the rim and raised his voice.

‘Ma’am, you realise it’s a state offence to hold a public assembly without a permit?’

She spun so fast she almost went over, but she steadied herself on bare feet, and then lifted her chin with grace.

Whoa. She was…

His synapses forgot how they worked as he stared and he had to will them to resume sending the signals his body needed to keep breathing. He’d never been so grateful for his county-issue sunglasses in his life; without them she’d see his eyes as round and glazed as the hypnotised steer.

‘I hope there’s a siege happening somewhere!’ she called, sliding her hands up onto her middle. Her righteousness didn’t make her any less attractive. Those little clenched fists only accentuated the oblique angle where her waist became her hips. Her continuing complaint drew his eyes back up to the perfectly even teeth she flashed as she growled at him with her non-Texan vowels.

‘Because I’ve been on this rooftop for two hours. The cows have nearly trebled since I called for help.’

Cows. Definitely a tourist.

Guess an hour was a long time when you were stuck on a roof. Jed kept it light to give his thumping pulse time to settle and to give her temper nowhere to go. ‘You’re about the most interest these steer have had all day,’ he said, keeping his voice easy, moving cautiously between the first two lumbering animals.

He leaned back against the cattle as hard as they leaned into him, slapping the occasional rump and cracking a whistle through his curled tongue. They made way enough for him to get through, but only just. ‘What are you doing up there?’

Her perfectly manicured eyebrows shot up. ‘I assume that’s a rhetorical question?’

A tiny part of him died somewhere. Beautiful and sharp. Damn.

He chose his words carefully and worked hard not to smile. ‘How did you come to be up there?’

‘I stopped for…’ Her unlined brow creased just slightly. ‘There were about a dozen of them, coming out in front of me.’

He nudged the nearest steer with his hip and then shoved into it harder until it shuffled to its right. Then he stepped into the breach and was that much closer to the stranded tourist.

She followed his progress from on high. It kind of suited her.

‘I got out to shoo them away.’

‘Why not just nudge through them with your vehicle?’

‘Because it’s a rental. And because I didn’t want to hurt them, just move them.’

Beautiful, sharp, but kind-hearted. His smile threatened again. ‘So how did you end up on the roof?’ He barely needed to even raise his voice now; he was that close to her car. Even the mob had stopped its keening to listen to the conversation.

‘They closed in behind me. I couldn’t get back round to my door. And then more came and I…just…’

Clambered up onto the hood and then the roof? Something caught his eye as he reached the front corner of the vehicle. He bent quickly and retrieved them. ‘These yours?’

The dainty heels hung from one of his crooked fingers.

‘Are they ruined? I kicked them off when I climbed up.’

‘Hard to know, ma’am.’

‘Oh.’

Her disappointment seemed genuine. ‘Expensive?’

She waved away that concern. ‘They were my lucky Louboutins.’

Get lucky more like it. He did his best not to imagine them on the end of those forever legs. ‘Not so lucky for them.’

He edged along the side of the car to pass the shoes up to her and she folded herself down easily to retrieve them.

She stayed squatted. ‘So…now what?’

‘I suggest you get comfortable, ma’am. I’ll start moving the steer back towards the fence.’

She glanced around them and frowned. ‘They don’t look so fierce from up here. I swear they were more aggressive before.’

‘Maybe they smelled your fear?’

She studied him, curiosity at the front of her big blue-green eyes, trying to decide whether he was serious. ‘Are you going to move them yourself?’

‘I’ll have Deputy help me until the men from the Double Bar C arrive.’

That got her attention. ‘These are Calhoun cows?’

‘Cattle.’

She pressed her lips together at his correction. ‘That’s where I was coming from. Calling on Jessica Calhoun. But she was out.’

He paused in his attempts at shoving through the steer and frowned. ‘Jess expecting you?’

‘What are you, their butler?’

Again with the sass. It wasn’t her best feature, but it did excite his blood just a hint. Weird how your body could hate something and want it all at the same time. Maybe that was a carryover from his years in the city. ‘I just figured I’d save you some time. Jess is more than out, she’s on her honeymoon.’

That took the wind from her sails. She sagged, visibly.

‘Sorry.’ He shrugged and then couldn’t help himself. He muttered before starting up on the steer-shoving again, ‘Would you like to leave your card?’

She sighed. ‘Okay, I’m sorry for the butler crack. You’re a police officer—I guess it’s your job to know everyone’s business, technically speaking.’

A pat with one hand and a slap on the way back through. With no small amount of pleasure in enlightening her, he pointed at his shoulder. ‘See these stars? That makes me county sheriff. Technically speaking.’

She blew at the loose strand of blond hair curling down in front of her left eye and carefully tucked it back into the tight braid hiding the rest of it from him. Working out whether to risk more sarcasm, perhaps?

She settled on disdain.

Good call. Women in cattle-infested waters…

‘Well, Sheriff, if your deputy could rouse himself to the task at hand maybe we can all get on with our day.’

That probably qualified as a peace offering where she came from.

He lifted his head and called loudly, ‘Deputy!’

One hundred and twenty pounds of pure hair and loyalty bounded out of his service vehicle and lumbered towards them. The cattle paid immediate attention and, as a body, began to stir.

‘Settle,’ he murmured. Deputy slowed and sat.

She spun back to look at him. ‘That’s your deputy?’

‘Yup.’

‘A dog?’

‘Dawg, actually.’

She stared. ‘Because this is Texas?’

‘Because it’s his name. Deputy Dawg. It would be disrespectful to call him anything else.’

‘And he’s trained to herd cows?’

He hid his laugh in the grunt of pushing past yet another stubborn steer. ‘Not really, but from where I’m standing beggars can’t be choosers—’ he made himself add some courtesy ‘—ma’am.’

She squatted onto her bottom and slid her feet down the back windscreen of the car. They easily made the trunk.

‘You have a point,’ she grudgingly agreed, then gestured to a particular spot in the fence hidden to him by the wall of steer. ‘The hole’s over there.’

But her concession wasn’t an apology and it wasn’t particularly gracious.

Just like that, he was thinking of New York again. And that sucked the humour plain out of him.

‘Thank you,’ he said, then turned and whistled for Deputy.

Every single cell in Ellie Patterson’s body shrivelled with mortification. Awful enough to be found like this, so absurdly helpless, but she’d been nothing but rude since the officer—sheriff—stopped to help her. As though it was somehow his fault that her day had gone so badly wrong.

Her whole week.

She shuddered in a deep breath and shoved the regret down hard where she kept all her other distracting feelings. Between the two of them, the sheriff and his…Deputy…were making fairly good work of the cows. They’d got the one closest to the hole in the fence turned around and encouraged it back through, but the rest weren’t exactly hurrying to follow. It wasn’t like picking up one lost duckling in Central Park and having the whole flock come scrambling after it.

The massive tricolour dog weaved easily between the forest of legs, keeping the cows’ attention firmly on it and away from her—a small blessing—but the sheriff was slapping the odd rump, whistling and cursing lightly at the animals in a way that was very…well…Texan.

He couldn’t have been more cowboy if he tried.

But there was a certain unconcerned confidence in his actions that was very appealing. This was not a man that would be caught dead cowering on the roof of his car.

Another animal lumbered through to the paddock it had come from and casually wandered off to eat some grass. Thirty others still surrounded her.

This was going to take some time.

Ellie relaxed on her unconventional perch and channelled her inner Alex—her easygoing baby sister—scratching around for the positives in the moment. Actually, the Texan sun was pleasant once the drama of the past couple of hours had passed and once someone else was taking responsibility for the cows. And there were worse ways to pass the time than watching a good-looking man build up a sweat.

‘Sure you don’t want to come down here and help now that you’ve seen how docile they are?’ the man in question called.

Docile? They’d nearly trampled her earlier. Sort of. Getting friendly with the wildlife was not the reason she drove all this way to Texas.

Not that she’d really thought through any part of this visit.

Two days ago she’d burst out of the building her family owned, fresh from the devil of all showdowns with her mother in which she’d hurled words like hypocrite and liar at the woman who’d given her life. In about as much emotional pain as she could ever remember being.

Two hours and a lot of hastily dropped gratuities later, she was on the I-78 in a little white rental heading south.

Destination: Texas.

‘Very sure, thank you, Sheriff. You were clearly born for this.’

He seemed to stiffen but it was only momentary. If she got lucky, country cowboys—even ones in uniform—had dulled sarcasm receptors.

‘So…Jess just got married?’ she called to fill the suddenly awkward silence. Back home there was seldom any silence long enough to become awkward.

‘Yep.’ He slapped another rump and sent a cow forward. ‘You said you know the Calhouns?’

I think I am one. Wouldn’t that put a tilt in his hat and a heap more lines in his good ol’ Texan brow.

‘I… Yes. Sort of.’

He did as good a job of the head tilt as his giant dog. ‘Didn’t realise knowing someone or not was a matter of degrees.’

It really was poor on her part that two straight days on the road and she hadn’t really thought about how she was going to answer these kinds of questions. But she hadn’t worked the top parties of New York only to fall apart the moment a stranger asked a few pointed questions.

She pulled herself together. ‘I’m expected, but I’m…early.’ Cough. A couple of months early. ‘I wasn’t aware of Jessica’s plans.’

They fell to silence again. Then he busied himself with more cows. They were starting to move more easily now that their volume had reduced on this side of the wire, inversely proportional to the effort the sheriff was putting in. His movements were slowing and his breath came faster. But every move spoke of strength and resilience.

‘Your timing is off,’ he puffed between heaving cows. ‘Holt’s away, too, right now and Meg’s away at college. Nate’s still on tour.’

Her chest squeezed. Two brothers and two sisters? Just like that, her family doubled. But she struggled to hide the impact his simple words had. ‘Tour? Rock star or military?’

He slowly turned and stared right at her as if she’d insulted him. ‘Military.’

Clipped and deep. Maybe she had offended him? His accent was there but nowhere near as pronounced as the young cowboy she’d met out at the Calhoun ranch who told her in his thick drawl that Jess wasn’t home. Least that’s what she’d thought he’d said. She wasn’t fluent in deep Texan.

The animals seemed to realise there were now many more of them inside the field than outside it and they began to drift back through the fence to the safety of their numbers. It wasn’t quick, but it was movement. And it was in the right direction.

The sheriff whistled and his dog immediately came back to his side. They both stood, panting, by her rental’s tailpipe and watched the dawdling migration.

‘He’s well trained,’ Ellie commented from her position above the sheriff’s shoulder, searching for something to say.

‘It was part of our deal,’ he answered cryptically. Then he turned and thrust his hand up towards her. ‘County Sheriff Jerry Jackson.’

Ellie made herself ignore how many cow rumps that hand had been slapping only moments before. They weren’t vermin, just…living suede. His fingers were warm as they pressed into hers, his shake firm but not crippling. She tried hard not to stiffen.

‘Jed,’ he modified.

‘Sheriff.’ She smiled and nodded as though she was in a top-class restaurant and not perched on the back of a car surrounded by rogue livestock.

‘And you are…?’

Trying not to tell you, she realised, not entirely sure why. For the first time it dawned on her that she’d be a nobody here. Not a socialite. Not a performer. Not a Patterson.

No responsibilities. No expectations.

Opportunity rolled out before her bright and shiny and warmed her from the inside. But then she remembered she’d never be able to escape who she was—even if she wasn’t in fact who she’d thought she was for the past thirty years.

‘Ellie.’ She almost said Eleanor, the name she was known by in Manhattan, but at the last moment she used the name Alex called her. ‘Ellie Patterson.’

‘Where are you staying, Ellie?’

His body language was relaxed and he had the ultimate vouch pinned high on his chest—a big silver star. There was no reason in the world that she should be bristling at his courteous questions and yet…she was.

‘Are you just making conversation or is that professional interest?’

His polite smile died before it formed fully. He turned up to face her front-on. ‘The Calhouns are friends of mine and you’re a friend of theirs…’ Though the speculation in his voice told her he really wasn’t convinced of that yet. ‘It would be wrong of me to send you on your way without extending you some country courtesy in their place.’

It was credible. This was Texas, after all. But trusting had never come easy to her. And neither had admitting she wasn’t fully on top of everything. In New York, that was just assumed.

She was Eleanor.

And she’d assumed she’d be welcomed with open arms at the Calhoun ranch. ‘I’m sure I’ll find a place in town…’

‘Ordinarily I’d agree with you,’ he said. ‘But the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce is having their annual convention in town this week so our motel and bed and breakfasts are pretty maxed out. You might have a bit of trouble.’

Embarrassed heat flooded up her back. Accommodation was a pretty basic thing to overlook. She called on her fundraising persona—the one that had served her so well in the ballrooms of New York—and brushed his warning off. ‘I’m sure I’ll find something.’

‘You could try Nan’s Bunk’n’Grill back on I-38, but it’s a fair haul from here.’ He paused, maybe regretting his hospitality in the face of her bland expression. ‘Or the Alamo, right here in town, can accommodate a single. It’s vacant right now but that could change any time.’

Having someone organise her didn’t sit well, particularly since she’d failed abysmally to organise herself. If she had to, she’d drive all the way to Austin to avoid having to accept the condescension of strangers.

‘Thanks for the concern, Sheriff, but I’ll be fine.’ Her words practically crunched with stiffness.

He studied her from behind reflective sunglasses, until a throat gurgle from Deputy got his attention. He turned and looked back up the dirt road where a dust stream had appeared.

‘That’s Calhoun men,’ he said simply. ‘They’ll deal with the rest of the steer and repair the fence.’

Instant panic hit her. If they were Calhoun employees, then they were her employees. She absolutely didn’t want their first impression of her to be like this, cowering and ridiculous on the rooftop of her car. What if they remembered it when they found out who she was? She started to slide off.

Without asking, he stretched up over the trunk and caught her around the waist to help her dismount. Her bare feet touched softly down onto the cow-compacted earth and she stumbled against him harder than was polite.

Or bearable.

She used the moment of steadying herself as an excuse to push some urgent distance between them but he stayed close, towering over her and keeping the last curious cows back. A moment later, a truck pulled up and a handful of cowboys leapt off the tray and launched into immediate action. That gave her the time she needed to slip her heels back on and slide back into the rental.

She was Eleanor Patterson. Unflappable. Capable. Confident.

Once inside, she lowered her window and smiled her best New York dazzler out at him. ‘Thank you, Sheriff—’

‘Jed.’

‘—for everything. I’ll know better than to get out in the middle of a stampede next time.’

And just as she was feeling supremely on top of things again, he reached through her open window and brushed his fingers against her braided hair and retrieved a single piece of straw.

Her chest sucked in just as all the air in her body puffed out and she couldn’t help the flinch from his large, tanned fingers.

No one touched her hair.

No one.

She faked fumbling for her keys and it effectively brushed his hand away. But it didn’t do a thing to diminish the temporary warmth his brief touch had caused. Its lingering compounded her confusion.

But he didn’t miss her knee-jerk reaction. His lips tightened and Ellie wished he’d take the sunglasses off so she could see his eyes. For just a moment. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and pushed away her hormones’ sudden interest in Sheriff Jerry Jackson.

‘Welcome to Larkville, Ms. Patterson,’ he rumbled, deep and low.

Larkville. Really, shouldn’t a town with a name like that have better news to offer? A town full of levity and pratfalls, not secrets and heartbreak.

But she had to find out.

Either Cedric Patterson was her father…or he wasn’t.

And if he wasn’t—her stomach curled in on itself—what the hell was she going to do?

She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you again, Sheriff.’

‘Remember…the Alamo.’

The timing was too good. Despite all her exhaustion and uncertainty, despite everything that had torn her world wide open this past week, laughter suddenly wanted to tumble out into the midday air.

She resisted it, holding the unfamiliar sensation to herself instead.

She started her rental.

She put it in gear.

Funny how she had to force herself to drive off.