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“I don’t have one. I do a lot of work with charities.”
Great, no marketable skills. He sighed. She appealed to him, he should be getting farther away from her, but instead…
“I have some filing that needs to be done at the office. You can work for me until your car is ready. I’ll pay for your repairs and give you room and board. Sound good?”
“Don’t you have to get some sort of approval for that?”
Yes, but that was his worry not hers. “Don’t you ever stop arguing?”
She grinned at him, looking like an impish fairy for a brief moment. “No, I don’t.”
“Somehow I suspected that.”
“I really appreciate all you’re doing for me.”
“No problem. Let me get your luggage loaded in the back of the truck and we’ll head home.”
“Don’t you need to stay here?”
“Nah, my deputy needs the experience of writing up paperwork.”
Despite her evasive answers, he wanted her like hell on fire. Damn, he should have let her go to the motel, but he couldn’t let her stay in a lonely motel room. As ridiculous as it seemed, he wanted to watch over her while she slept.
Lydia woke in a dark room. The deep and steady sound of someone else’s breathing alarmed her. Where was she?
The window was open and the curtain billowed gently in the breeze. There were foreign sounds, cicadas, grasshoppers and the lowing of cows filling the air. Not like Manhattan.
The pillow beneath her head was firm, not the cloud-like softness of her own goose-down pillow. The sheets were cotton, and she seemed to be wearing some sort of sleep shirt with buttons.
She sat up, trying to identify the other person in the room. A familiar scent assailed her. Woodsy and masculine. An aftershave that was familiar to her but not her father’s.
“Lydia? Are you awake?”
The sheriff, Evan. The events of the night rushed back to her. She’d been in a wreck and instead of doing the smart thing and telling the truth, she’d concocted a story to cover herself. And not much of one at that.
For the first time since her father had made public his intention to buy her a husband six months ago she felt free.
She shrugged aside the feelings of melancholy and vulnerability and savored instead her newfound freedom.
The neon glow of the clock on the nightstand said six-fifteen. The second time she’d wakened, she thought. The first time he’d awakened her, and it had been vague and annoying because she was so tired.
This man wanted nothing from her. He didn’t care that she had a large sum of money tied to her. His concern for her safety came from the genuine goodness inside him. He was a tough-looking character, but he had a good heart. She’d noticed that not only in the way he’d dealt with her, but also in how he interacted with the other professionals at the accident scene.
“Yes, Sheriff, I am.”
He made a tsking sound and walked over to the bed. A click and then the bedside light was on. “I thought we agreed you’d call me Evan?”
He looked rumpled and sleepy, and she wanted to open her arms, pull back the covers and invite him to rest his weary body next to hers. Some deep primal instinct made her want to comfort him. “You’re right—Evan.”
“That’s better,” he said, caressing her cheek.
His touch sent shivers of awareness coursing through her veins. The electric pulses were the forerunners of desire, Lydia thought, with no small shock. She’d never felt desire before this evening. Never wanted a man to linger when he caressed or kissed her. She enjoyed the touch and resented its loss when Evan pulled back.
“I’m going to have to head out soon to start the morning chores before going into town. You can take today off and start that job at the office tomorrow. My father will wake you in two hours to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”
He liked to give orders, Lydia realized.
“Yes, sir,” she said, with a tinge of disrespect.
“Does your mouth ever get you into trouble?” he asked.
“Not anything I can’t handle,” she said, feeling flirty from his touch. Would he caress her again if she sat up? Could she tempt him into kissing her?
She sat, letting the top sheet drop to her waist. His gaze skimmed down her body lingering over the curve of her breast before he looked away.
“I’m sure,” he said, walking to the door.
“Evan.”
He glanced back over his shoulder; cloaked as he was in the shadows spilling from the opening doorway, his expression was inscrutable.
“Sorry.”
He crossed back to her, taking her shoulders in his hands, he leaned her back against the pillow. He pulled the sheet up to her neck, and his hands lingered on her body. She wanted to wriggle around and bring his touch closer to the aching parts of her body.
“Don’t tease me, Lydia. I’ll take what you’re offering and give you back passion like you’ve never found before.”
“I wasn’t teasing.”
“What were you doing?”
“I don’t know. But your touch…”
“Yes?”
“Your touch is like the sweetest imported chocolate I’ve ever had. One that I savored for months, coming back time and again for a tiny lick. I wanted one more lick.”
“Not right now,” he said.
“No, not right now,” she agreed.
He walked to the door again. Just as he stepped into the hallway, she leaned up on her elbow. “Evan, I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with just one lick.”
“Neither will I,” he said and disappeared.
“There’s a woman in the house.”
Evan didn’t look up from putting his tack away. “Yes, Dad, there is.”
“Why?” Payne asked.
“She had a wreck last night avoiding one of our cows.” Evan closed the tack-room door and started up toward the house. His father fell into step beside him. Evan watched the old man from the corner of his eye. He wondered if Payne ever got lonely living out here with just Evan and ranch hands for company.
“We’ve got insurance,” Payne said, interrupting his thoughts.
Evan nodded. “She has a head injury.”
“Concussion?” Payne asked as they entered the kitchen. Both men stopped to kick off their boots. One of Evan’s mother’s lingering edicts. No dirty boots in the house. She’d been dead for over twenty years, but they still wouldn’t track muck into her kitchen.
“I don’t think so. But we couldn’t be sure.”
“That’s good. When’s she leaving?”
“She’s broke. I’m going to put her to work at the sheriff’s office until she has enough money to pay off her car.”
“Do you know what you’re doing, son?”
Evan nodded.
“She looks a little like Shanna.”
“I know.”
“See that you remember that.”
Evan started breakfast trying to forget what his father’s words meant.
Shanna had been spoiled, and though she’d loved him at school, his hometown had been too much for her. She’d begged him to move back to D.C. with her. To go back to working with the FBI when it became apparent that ranch life wasn’t what she’d envisioned. But he hadn’t loved her enough to leave his family and his home. Nor had she.
He’d been a mess when Shanna had left him for the bright lights of D.C. But Evan had learned that lesson. He didn’t need a reminder. Fooling around with Lydia was all he had in mind. And that was more dreaming than anything else. If she stayed here, there were Payne and a dozen ranch hands to act as chaperones.
The two Powell men sat down to a cold cereal breakfast without speaking. The silence was comfortable to them and they both enjoyed it for their own reasons.
The phone interrupted breakfast, and Payne, closest to the wall unit, reached out his long arm to answer it. He nodded to Evan. Evan took the call in the other room.
“What’s up, Hobbs?”
“I ran the description of the car and the lady last night and nothing came up.”
“Okay, we’ll look into it when I come down this afternoon.”
Lydia passed by the doorway as Evan hung up the phone. “Lydia?”
“Yes?” she said.
He saw that the lights last night hadn’t fooled him, she was even more beautiful in the pure light of day. Her icy blond hair was pulled into a chignon. He knew it wasn’t a bun because his mother had explained women’s hairstyles to him when he was a boy.
“We couldn’t find your name in the computer last night to match to the car. I’m going to need you to write down the spelling.”
She hesitated a second before she looked away. “Okay.”
“Is this going to be a problem?”
Her face was transparent and her eyes, which were a deep sapphire this morning, wouldn’t meet his. She wore a stylish sundress with thin straps and a short skirt. She had knockout legs. He longed to feel them wrapped around his hips.
Dammit, get your mind back to business. The wound on her forehead had disappeared. She had a good hand with makeup, he thought.
“No. It’s just that well…the car isn’t registered in my name.” She was lying to him. And she wasn’t very good at it.
“You know we can find out who you are from the vehicle identification number, right?”
“Really?”
He nodded.
She moved closer to him. Her expensive perfume surrounded him, and he could think of nothing but searching her body to find out where she’d dabbed it. “Will you take my word for it that I haven’t done anything illegal and the car really is mine?”
She had innocent eyes; he didn’t think she’d done anything illegal. There was something about the eyes of a criminal that you never forgot. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? What would it take to make that a yes?” she asked, moving a breath closer and running her finger along his jaw.
“More than a lick,” he said stepping away. Damn, he liked flirting with a sassy woman. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it until this very moment. If he stayed in the room with her alone for a few more seconds he was going to forget his good sense and kiss her. Take those perfectly painted lips beneath his own and not come up for air until she forgot about the stories she was trying to tell him.
“Well that’s all I’ve got to offer right now,” she said.
“Let’s go have some breakfast and you can meet my dad. You can tell me the details of why you’re using an assumed name on the way into town.”
He followed her down the hall to the silence of the kitchen, watching her hips sway with each step and feeling arousal tingle along his spine and groin. He wanted her, and she had to know. He’d always been transparent when he was in lust.
He was once again in the crossfire that had cut him down before. A lying woman he wanted more than his next breath or his job. He’d chosen poorly the first time. He wouldn’t again.
Three
Staying in the small town of Placid Springs, Florida, was going to be an experience. To call it a town was being generous. The one main street possessed a flashing caution signal, and there wasn’t a department store to be found.
She’d come into the office with Evan because she couldn’t stand being alone with her thoughts. The sheriff’s office was besieged by well-wishers and curiosity seekers for a good part of the afternoon while she was there. Every person in the small town knew each other. Apparently she was the first person to hit a light pole while avoiding a cow.
“Most people just stop, ma’am. The cows rarely ram ya’,” one old-timer told her.
She was between a rock and a hard place. Evan embodied all of the qualities she’d found lacking in the men she’d dated. And after meeting the kind older gentleman that was Evan’s father, she doubted Evan would understand how demanding a father could be.
The mechanic had called; it was going to take two weeks for the parts needed to repair her car to come in. She wished Aunt Gracie was home so she could wire her some money. No, she didn’t, she wanted to do this on her own.
Say it again, she thought, maybe you’ll begin to believe it.
“We still can’t find your name in our computers.”
Lydia flinched and stared up into the sheriff’s frozen gray eyes. She’d tried to think of how to get around having her father find out where she was while still assuaging the local law-enforcement needs. “I…”
