The Sheriff's Surrender (4 page)

He flattered himself…not that she hadn't been desperate a time or two. There had been times when she would have sold her soul, would have groveled and pleaded for his forgiveness. She wasn't proud of it, but then, she wasn't proud of a lot of things.

But to manufacture death threats… Did he think it was a bogus bomb that had scattered pieces of her car over a city block last week? Had those been bogus bullets tearing through the walls and windows of the safe house last night?

Feeling lost and alone, she managed a careless shrug. “Nothing happened.”

“Jace said—”

“Then ask Jace.” He sure as hell wouldn't believe anything she told him.

After another shuddering crack of thunder, he spoke again. “Why did he call me? Kansas City has a big department. He's got friends in other departments all over the area. Why me?”

She looked at him, in shadow one instant, brightly illuminated the next, then got to her feet. “He still has some illusions about you. He believes you're an honorable man.” She walked as far as the kitchen door before turning back. “But you and I both know better, don't we?”

 

Tuesday morning was about as perfect a June day as Oklahoma ever saw. Except for the rain glistening on the grass and quickly evaporating from the porch, there was no sign of last night's storm. Of course, Reese thought sourly as he walked through the living room, there was no sign inside of his late-night run-in with Neely, but that didn't mean anything.

He'd smelled the coffee perking the instant he'd awakened and wondered if she'd developed a taste for it over the years. He saw the answer was no when he walked into the kitchen, where she sat at the table, bare feet propped on an empty chair, a magazine open in both hands and a glass of orange juice in front of her.

She wore another of those too summery, too feminine dresses, this one in a soft green that reminded him of his favorite sherbet. It was sleeveless, with a row of buttons from the point of a deep vee all the way to the hem, but she hadn't buttoned them all. The fabric fell away on either side, exposing ticklish knees, shapely calves and delicate ankles. Her pale brown hair was longer than he'd acknowledged yesterday, long enough to flip up in a tiny curl on the ends, and her glasses—

Apparently suspecting that he'd done a double take on the half-glasses that perched below the bridge of her nose, she peered at him over them. “Do I look like an old-maid schoolmarm?”

With that face? That body? That sleek, waifish hair and those brightly painted stars that decorated the glass frames? Not by a country mile.

She didn't seem to notice that he didn't reply but turned his attention instead to filling the biggest mug in his cabinet with steaming coffee.

“For vanity's sake, I resisted reading glasses for as long as I could, but I finally realized that I never saw anyone anyway, so what did it matter?”

“How do you practice law without seeing anyone?” He wasn't interested. He swore he wasn't. He was merely making small talk.

“Well, of course I see people in court, but I hardly ever read there. The rest of the time I'm usually alone.”

Except for meetings in her office, he thought with a scowl. And lunches and dinners outside the office. Movies with friends. Dates. Sleepovers. Weekends away. She'd always been a very social person, more so than he would have liked when he'd been with her. He didn't believe for an instant that she'd changed.

How social was she with Jace? Intimately so, she'd hinted last night. Though he wouldn't admit it to anyone else to save his life, that hint was part of what had kept him awake last night. Every time he'd started to doze off, the image of the two of them together had jerked him awake again.

His first impulse was to write off her implication as a lie. She'd proven she wasn't above lying. Hell, she was a lawyer. One went hand in hand with the other. Besides, Jace knew everything that had happened—all that she'd put Reese through. He might like her, but his loyalty was to family first. He would never have an affair with her without telling Reese first.

His second impulse stopped him from following his first. It wouldn't be the first time it had happened. Barnett men shared a lot in common, including similar tastes in women. He and Jace had dated each other's exes in high school and again
through college. And that would explain why his cousin cared so much about keeping her safe.

Of course, so would the fact that Jace was the best damn cop Reese had ever known. He had an unshakable sense of right and wrong. He hated injustice, hated to lose, and would give up his own life without hesitation to save the least worthy person out there. It was because of him that Reese had become a cop—because of him that Reese tried to be as good. He failed, though. He wasn't as selfless, and couldn't be as unbiased. He saw too many of the shades of gray that Jace simply didn't see.

The soft pad of bare feet on stone alerted Reese to the fact that Neely was coming closer—or was it the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, or the unsettled twinge in the pit of his stomach? He moved to one side and watched as she took a bowl from the cabinet and a box of cereal from the pantry. Considering how little time she'd spent in his kitchen, she seemed very much at home there. She knew which drawer the silverware was in and which of four identical pottery jars held the sugar. What else had she snooped into while he'd slept, or tried to?

She settled at the table again, and for a moment there was only the sound of crunching. Of course the moment didn't last. “So…I realize you aren't married now, but have you been?”

“No.” Marriage had never come high on his list of priorities. He'd more or less taken for granted that it was something he would do after he'd done everything else. He had assumed for a long time that he would do it with her, even though their relationship had come with its own built-in problems—namely, her nasty habit of helping crooks stay out of jail. Eventually, he'd figured, between him and the babies they would have, they would get her out of the criminal-defense business and who knew—maybe even make a full-time wife and mom out of her.

He'd been a fool.

“So you're playing the field.” When he glanced at her curiously, she gestured to the answering machine. “Shay. Gin
ger.” She lowered her voice into erotic-dream range. “‘Hey, cowboy, come take me for a ride.'”

He tried to ignore the heat that seeped through him—did his damnedest to shut out long-repressed memories of him and Neely, naked and wicked and incredibly good. He'd always enjoyed sex. Even his first time, when he was seventeen and Joelle Barefoot's cousin had come up from Broken Bow for a week and shown him things he hadn't even imagined, had been pretty damn amazing. But it had been different with Neely. Not always-fireworks-seeing-stars-multiple-climax spectacular, but…special. Satisfying in ways that went much deeper than mere physical pleasure. Connecting in ways that had nothing to do with Part A sliding into Slot B.

He took a swallow of coffee to clear the hoarseness from his throat. It didn't work entirely. “Shay's a friend. So is her husband. And Ginger would be too young to be my kid sister…if I had a kid sister.”

“What about ‘Ride me, cowboy'?”

Her name was Isabella, she'd come to Heartbreak a month earlier to spend a weekend with her college roommate—Callie, the town's nurse-midwife—and hadn't left yet, and he wasn't sure he would ever look at her again without thinking of sex.

And Neely.

“Believe it or not, the riding lesson she was talking about was actually a riding lesson. She's never been around horses so I taught her the basics.”

Studying him thoughtfully, she chewed a mouthful of cardboard-tasting wheat chaff and washed it down with juice. “Why wouldn't I believe you?” she asked evenly. “As far as I know, the only thing you've ever lied to me about is the way you felt about me.”

“I never lied.” He'd loved her dearly, even though they'd had some very different ideas on some very important subjects such as right, wrong and justice. Even though he'd taken a lot of flak on the job because of his relationship with her. He'd loved her more than he'd ever loved anyone.

Until the day he'd watched Judy Miller die.

“So your definition of always was just different from mine—as, apparently, was your definition of love.”

“No. We'd simply reached the point where I could no longer overlook certain aspects of who you were and what you did. I couldn't continue a relationship with you and maintain any measure of self-respect.”

She brought her dishes to the sink, rinsed them, dried her hands, then faced him. There were two spots of bright color on her cheeks, made more prominent by her unusual paleness. “I didn't kill that woman.”

“You made it possible.”

Stubbornly she shook her head side to side. “Feel guilty if you want, Reese, but don't try to put it on me. I didn't do anything wrong. My client was entitled to a proper defense, and I saw that he got it. I did my job, and I did it well. End of story.”

“You did your job without regard for the truth, without the slightest concern for the reality of the situation. You wanted to win at any cost, and you succeeded—even though the cost was an innocent woman's life. You may not have pulled the trigger, Neely, but you put the gun in that bastard's hand. You put him back out on the streets. You made it possible for him to make good on his threats.”

“I was just doing my job! I didn't do anything wrong!”

“Lie to yourself, but don't bother lying to me. I had to learn the hard way not to believe anything you say, but I did learn.” He walked out then and left her standing there looking…shaken. Upset. Regretful. And guilty. She knew she wasn't as innocent in Judy's death as she pretended.

Just as he knew that he shared some responsibility, too, along with the rest of the Keegan County Sheriff's Department.

Refusing to follow that train of thought, he dropped down into his favorite chair and used the remote to turn on the television and surf through a hundred or so satellite channels before settling on a fifties-era Western. Though he'd seen the show before, he concentrated on it intensely so he wouldn't
have to notice that Neely was still standing where he'd left her, that her head was bowed and her shoulders rounded, or that she looked as forlorn and alone as anyone he'd ever seen.

If she was forlorn, that was her own fault, and being alone was her choice. She'd never faced any shortage of male attention. When they were dating, men had often hit on her right in front of him. Not men in Thomasville, who knew what she did or what he did, but in the city—in restaurants, clubs or just walking down the street. From teenage boys to white-haired grandfathers, it had seemed that no stranger was immune to her charms.

He
sure as hell hadn't been immune the first time he'd seen her. But he was now. He was older, tougher, less susceptible to women in general, to big brown eyes and delicate little smiles in particular. He knew there were things in life more important than great sex and that the price for getting mixed up with Neely was dearer than he could pay. Besides, after today, he wasn't going to see her again.

And now he'd learned one more lesson—he was never doing another favor for Jace as long as he lived. That was a promise.

In the kitchen Neely finally moved—he heard, felt but didn't see it—but she didn't come into the living room. Good. It was easier to keep her out of his mind when she was out of his sight.

She gave him a few hours of relative peace, with nothing but the television to disturb the quiet, before she came in and sat uncomfortably on the edge of the couch. He pretended to not notice her for as long as he could, but clearly there was something she wanted to say, and just as clearly she didn't intend to say it until he gave her his attention. He waited until the next commercial break, muted the TV and looked at her.

“What are the plans for today?”

His plans were to be rid of her by sundown. Other than that, he neither knew nor cared, and he shrugged to convey exactly that. “Either Jace will pick you up or you'll go to the jail over in Buffalo Plains.”

“I understand that. But when?”

He shrugged again.

“Is there any reason I can't go now?”

“Beyond the fact that Jace isn't here?”

“You could take me to the jail.”

He could do that, Reese acknowledged—could give her over into the custody of the jailer, then go to his office on the floor above. Get some work done. Forget that she was locked up below in a six-by-eight-foot cell with a metal cot, no windows and no privacy even for the bathroom. Forget that she preferred such accommodations over his company. And while he was forgetting that, he would also wipe the last twenty-four hours from his memory. Sure, not a problem.

“Jace can pick me up there.”

But walking out of the jail with her would attract more attention than walking out of this house with her—more attention than his cousin would want. If she really was in danger, Reese wasn't about to do anything that might increase that danger for Jace.

Her voice grew taut. “I'd rather stay in your jail than in your house.”

“I'd prefer that, too.” But the words felt like a lie. Truth was, he found the prospect of Neely behind bars—an idea he'd once taken great satisfaction in—unsettling. Behind bars in his own jail… Not yet. Not until Jace's time ran out.

“I gave him until this evening,” he said flatly. “Like it or not, you're stuck here until then.”

For a long moment his gaze locked with hers, until he finally forced his back to the television. He turned the audio on again and watched from the corner of his eye as she stood and walked out of the room.

He was in the process of giving a small sigh of relief when the back door slammed. Jumping to his feet, he made it to the door in record time, crossed the deck in a half dozen strides, took the steps in one leap and grabbed her arm before she'd made it halfway across the yard. He was prepared for her instinctive jerk, holding tightly enough that she accomplished
nothing more than pulling herself off balance. Before she could try again, he pulled her back toward the house.