Deep in the Heart (12 page)

“Morning, Sheriff,” Monty said, as he stepped up onto the sidewalk.

John Thomas jumped. He hadn’t even heard his new deputy drive up. He glared down at the young man, and in doing so, missed his last sight of Samantha as she turned the street corner and disappeared from view.

“I see you brought your lady to town with you today,” Monty said. “Going to do a little shopping?”

“I suppose,” John Thomas muttered, and started into the office. “And she’s not my lady,” he added angrily, then wondered why he was mad.

“Sorry. I saw you cozying up to each other. I guess I just jumped to conclusions. Should have known that no L.A. lady would have anything to do with a Texas cop.”

Embarrassed, John Thomas stomped into the office, leaving the young deputy to follow. In a few minutes Monty was gone, having been sent to investigate a matter of possible poisoned animals on the Wright farm just outside of Cotton.

He’d been gone for several minutes before it occurred to John Thomas to wonder how Montgomery Turner knew that Samantha was from California. A strange fear shot through him, and then disappeared as quickly as it came. Someone in town had probably told him. It was impossible to have a private personal life in a town this small.

“I’ll be shooting at shadows, if I don’t get a grip,” John Thomas muttered, and slammed a stack of folders into a wire basket on his desk.

“Did you say something, Sheriff?” Carol Ann called from the other room.

“Nothing worth repeating,” he answered, and began going through his phone messages with one eye on the clock and the other on the door, wishing he didn’t have such a suspicious nature. With Samantha loose on the streets, his imagination was going to play hell with his peace of mind today for sure.

7

N
EARLY A WEEK
had come and gone since John Thomas started taking Sam with him to work, with each day becoming a repeat of the last. She would prowl the streets of Rusk, making herself just as at home there as she had on the streets of Cotton as a child.

She made friends with the owners of Memories, an antique and collectibles shop on the square, and now had a standing appointment at Beaute Queste every other week, just for the pleasure of letting someone else wash and dry her long, thick hair.

She was more familiar with the stock in Marie’s Unique Boutique than the sales clerks who worked there, and two days ago had discovered that she’d gone to school with one of the tellers at Southern Cherokee Federal Credit Union. She was reclaiming herself and her past, and in a small way, regaining her independence.

It was nearing Carol Ann’s quitting time. She stood and stretched, thankful that her shift as day dispatcher in the sheriff’s office was nearly over, then began gathering her belongings as her replacement came in the back door.

“Well my Lord, Delmar, it’s about time,” she said.

“I’ve been ready to go since I got here this morning.” Then she smiled to soften her complaint.

“Has it been that bad?” Delmar Follett asked, and then lowered his voice when Carol Ann frowned and pointed toward the doorway leading to John Thomas’s office.

“More like, has
he
been that bad?” Carol Ann whispered. “I don’t know how much longer his mood is going to last, but I suspect he’s just about ready to crack.”

The older man grinned. “I’ve knowed Johnny Knight since he was a baby. He’s got more guts than good sense. My money’s on the man, Carol Ann. Whatever’s botherin’ him, he can handle it.”

“Nothing’s
wrong
with him except the fact that he’s in love. Now either he doesn’t know it, or won’t admit it. My money’s on the latter. Other than that, he’s the same old sheriff.”

“Ooh Lordy! That’s a whole ’nother story. Thanks for the warnin’,” he said, and then grinned. “I’ll mind my p’s and q’s stay out of his way until things get better.”

The bell over the front door jangled. It was their only warning that someone had just entered the outer office. And since the secretary at the front desk had been out sick for two days, it was the dispatcher’s duty to intercept.

“I’ll get it,” she told Delmar, “but the next one’s yours.”

It was Samantha.

“Is he about ready to go?” Samantha asked, lowering her own voice an octave or two, as aware as the rest of the people John Thomas worked with that his usual good nature was out to lunch, and had been for days.

“You ask him,” Carol Ann said. “I’m ready to clock out. I’d hate to have to cry all the way home just because he yelled at me again for no reason.”

Samantha rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’m sorry. I think I’m getting on his nerves. It must be difficult for a confirmed bachelor to share his space, especially with a woman on the run.”

“I don’t think sharing space is his problem, girl,” Carol Ann said. “What I think is there’s already too much space between you and him. If you really want to help, kiss him senseless and put him out of his misery.”

“Carol Ann!” Samantha’s face turned a deep shade of red. “The things you say!” Then she forgot the outrage she knew she should have felt as she contemplated doing exactly what Carol Ann had suggested.

“See you tomorrow,” Carol Ann said, grinning in a conspiratorial manner as she left.

Samantha hesitated all of a minute while debating whether to intrude on Sheriff John Thomas Knight’s inner sanctum. Then she consoled herself with the thought:
He might be Sheriff to everyone else, but he’s still just Johnny to me.

She took a deep breath, pasted on a smile she wasn’t feeling, and entered the office. When she realized that he hadn’t noticed her, she stopped just inside the door and relished the chance to watch him unobserved.

He was deep in concentration as he sifted through the stack of paperwork before him. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched in an abstract pattern as he tapped a pen against an empty soft drink can.

Oh, God, Johnny. Why didn’t you come after me years ago? Why did it take a killer to make you care?

But there was no rhyme or reason to the sudden and unexplained end of their young love.

If her stomach hadn’t rumbled quietly as a reminder to be fed, she could have admired far longer the way his broad shoulders filled out his long-sleeved blue shirt, and the way he kept combing a hand through his hair, disrupting the short, thick strands into an untamed look rather than the carefully styled manner befitting a lawman.

When she knew that she’d watched him far too long for her own good, she cleared her throat just enough to get his attention. Surprised by the sound, he looked up and frowned, and at that moment, looked more outlaw than officer of the law.

“Sam!” How long had she been standing there?

The thought of being watched made him feel defenseless, and with this woman, he needed every defense he could maintain just to get through each day.

He glanced up at the clock and then back at her.

“Sorry. I didn’t know it was so late.”

But she didn’t answer, and he wondered what she was up to now.

When she sauntered toward him from across the room and circled his desk like a she-wolf circling her kill, his heart jumped into his throat.

What the hell is she playing at?

Watching the way her body moved beneath slim-legged jeans and a loose-fitting cowboy shirt made him restless. She leaned toward him, spilling long dark hair across her shoulder and down toward his desk.
Jesus!

All he had to do was reach up, grab a fistful of hair and pull her—

Samantha smiled, took the pen from his hand, laid the papers he was holding back on top of the stack in front of him, and pretended to ignore his wary expression.

“Were there any hostage situations today?” she asked.

He shook his head, too surprised to speak.

“Did any banks get robbed, or anyone get murdered while I was buying makeup?”

“No,” he said, wondering where the hell this was leading.

“Then don’t you think it’s time you took me home and fed me? I’m starving.” She leaned forward until she could see herself reflected in the warm brown pupils of his eyes and took heart in the fact that they kept widening by the second. “Please,” she added, and sighed just enough that her breath fanned his cheeks in a whisper.

He shuddered, muttered a curse she couldn’t interpret, and stood so quickly that his chair hit the wall behind him. The pen rolled off the desk and onto the floor as he took her by the hand. Then he yanked his hat off the hook and shoved it onto his head and made for the door without a word.

Samantha seated herself in the pickup with a small but satisfied expression on her mouth, then looked out the window as if the scenery had suddenly become all-important.

“I need to stop in Cotton on the way home and pick up some wire and fence posts,” John Thomas said, as he backed out of the parking space.

“Okay. You know me. I can always find something to do.”

He stared long and hard at the innocent expression on her face and then sighed, telling himself that he’d just read more into her actions than he should have, warning himself not to fall back into the same old trap. But he was so damned miserable remembering what they’d had, and trying to figure out why it hadn’t mattered to her as much as it had to him, that he was making himself crazy.

They drove out of town in silence.

“Got everything you need?” the clerk from the hardware store asked as he tossed the last roll of wire into the back of John Thomas’s pickup truck.

“Everything but my passenger,” John Thomas said and then looked down Cotton’s main street, expecting to see Samantha lingering along the storefronts.

“I saw her heading toward the park,” the clerk answered.

John Thomas bolted across the street to the park on the other side. A spurt of adrenaline shot through his belly as he started across the grass. He had a sudden suspicion that he knew where Sam had gone. The path to their old, childhood hideaway lay in this direction.

She saw him coming. His long legs made short work of the distance between them as she watched from her vantage point behind the thicket. But when he stopped and shouted her name, she couldn’t ignore his call now, any more than she’d been able to ignore him when they were children.

“I’m here,” she said, and stepped out of the line of trees just long enough to let him see where she was.

He started toward her, unable to calm the rapid thump of his heartbeat as she smiled and waved.

“I should have known,” he said, as he stepped beneath the shade and pulled teasingly at the long dark braid hanging down her back.

“Come look, Johnny. It’s just like it was when we were kids. Even the mimosa looks the same, only bigger.” She grasped his hand and pulled him even deeper into the woods surrounding the park.

He followed. It wouldn’t have mattered where she was leading him, he would have gone. Refusing her wasn’t in his vocabulary and never had been.

“Look!” She pointed to the ground beneath the old mimosa tree where they’d taken blood oaths and pledged to be friends forever. “Remember, Johnny? Remember the night we—”

He turned her in his arms, his hands cupping her face and stopping the last of her words in midsentence as his brown eyes bored into her soul.

“I remember the last time we were here. It was the best and worst night of my life. You gave me something special, Sam. But why? Why didn’t you care enough to make it last?”

His words hurt. The joy she’d been experiencing moments ago disappeared beneath his accusations.

“Me? Why didn’t
I
care? You were the one who made the hit and run. I was the victim, not you. Remember?”

Her anger ate into his good sense. What he should have done, had he considered it, was simply walk away. But it was impossible in the face of what they’d just dug up.

“Me? Remember? Damn you, Sam, this is what I remember.”

Before she could think, he was holding her. The world tilted as his mouth swept across her face in an unerring move toward her lips. And then he was there, and she felt the breath leave her body as they connected with firm resolve.

John Thomas groaned and slipped the edge of his tongue just inside her lips, tracing her teeth and feeling her body shaking so fiercely against him that he thought she was crying.

Even that knowledge couldn’t stop what they’d begun. He lifted her feet off the ground and pulled her between his legs as he staggered toward the trunk of the mimosa. If he didn’t anchor soon, they’d both be on the ground, and he remembered all too damn well what had happened before beneath this tree.

Samantha groaned and took everything that he was willing to give, knowing full well that if he turned her loose now, she might die. And then she remembered where this had led before…and the fact that she’d barely survived then. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—let it happen again.

Far off in the distance thunder rumbled, reminding whoever cared to listen that rain was imminent.

John Thomas’s body ached, and his heart kept forgetting to beat as she wrapped herself around him. Each wanted more than what was, for the moment, possible to take.

“Ah damn,” he mumbled, and removed his mouth from her lips with reluctance. It was probably going to kill him, but he definitely needed to let her go.

Samantha sighed and then bit her lower lip when he lifted his head, shuddering as she tasted Johnny on her tongue. She slid down his body as he turned her loose, but was unable to move other than to rest her forehead against the front of his shirt. Neither of them seemed willing to make the break.

“It’s getting dark,” she whispered, as John Thomas trailed kisses across her cheek, his mouth lingering at the lobe of her ear in a way that sent shivers of longing running down her spine.

“I think it’s going to rain,” he murmured, when her hands slid around his waist and then into the back pockets of his pants, cupping his hips through the fabric and then urging him on to more than he was giving.

He shuddered, closing his eyes and swallowing harshly at the want that followed her actions. She was puling him closer and still it wasn’t enough to assuage each other’s needs.