The Sheriff With The Wyoming-Size Heart

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Resisting the pull that drew him to her, Riley backed to the middle of the room.

As calm as a doe in a spring meadow, she followed him with her eyes. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Corbett.”

“Riley,” he insisted, though he didn’t know why. Whatever resonated between them might beat like the drum of an ancient mating dance, but he recognized it as the rhythm of danger.

Margo stood at the window and watched Riley Corbett leave her yard for the second time that day. God, what an ordeal.

Since first realizing how runaway emotions had propelled her into every bad decision she’d ever made, she’d concentrated on controlling her feelings. And she’d learned how. She could hold her temper in the face of provocation. She no longer wept during sentimental movies. She’d learned to listen to the troubles of others without jumping in to help. She let insults skim across her like water off a waxed surface. She’d become a stranger to rampant feelings, and she liked it that way.

At least that had been true until today. Until Ariel Corbett and her father had exploded into her life.

How long had he been in her living room? Less than forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of torture, with emotions clawing inside her like rats for release. Concern. Envy. Excitement. Compassion. Anticipation. Desire.

Lord, not to mention desire.

It had zipped between them like electricity on an ungrounded wire. Hot and deadly. Ignoring it had been impossible. Leaving it unacknowledged had taken all the strength she possessed.

She should have shown him the door the second she sensed the attraction. But loneliness and longing—deadly emotions both—had driven her to prolong his visit.

She hadn’t had a friend in more than a dozen years, not since taking up with Nick. Almost from their first date, Nick had separated her from her small circle of girlfriends. She’d been so in love with him, she hadn’t noticed. Back then she’d believed love could heal every wound and fill every empty space, and she’d loved too fiercely to see it wasn’t so.

Love was a vain promise. Desire made one crazy. Emotions tromped good common sense into the ground. She knew those things to be true as surely as she breathed. So how had the demons broken free? How difficult was it going to be to lock them away again?

Did she need friends now as desperately as she’d once needed Nick’s love?

The possibility terrified her.

Yet she’d made Riley Corbett welcome in her home. She hoped he’d let her befriend his daughter. For the first time in years, she dared hope the awful ache left from when she’d lost Holly could be eased.

With her hand gripping the window frame, she forced deep, steadying breaths into her lungs and focused on Ariel. Margo wanted nothing from Riley beyond an agreement that his daughter could visit once in a while. And maybe she wanted that too much for her own well-being. Maybe she should shut herself off from any contact at all with that little girl.

But how could she? With Ariel, she’d experienced joy for the first time since giving Holly away. The desert of her soul had started to bloom again. Just the merest opening of the first blossom, but she couldn’t turn away from it.

No matter how terrifying the current that rippled between herself and Riley Corbett, she would open herself to his child.

Unable to sleep, Riley pulled on a sweat suit and running shoes. At 3:00 a.m. the streets would be empty and the silence might calm his thoughts. When he checked in on Ariel, his heart swelled against his ribs. He loved her beyond thought, and he would fight the world to keep her safe.

And yesterday he’d met someone eager to join him in the battle. He knew it without a doubt, although he’d never be able to explain to anyone else how he knew.

Leaving the hall light burning, he slipped silently out of the house. By confining his run to laps around the block, he could check on Ariel every few minutes.

When he passed Margo’s house, he slowed his pace a bit. No doubt she slept as peacefully as Ariel, since that strange vibration hadn’t seemed to touch her at all.

For him it echoed as strongly as the conversation. And the conversation had been playing like a subliminal tape nonstop.

Since leaving her house, the entire visit kept running through his head. Every word, every action, every glance that passed between them. And the more he rehearsed his visit, the more one fact became startlingly clear. He’d learned damn little about her.

She was a writer, she came from Texas, and neither of her parents was still alive. That was it. He’d asked questions. He’d offered facts about his own life. The conversation had not suffered from awkward pauses. As smooth as silk, she’d slid away from telling him anything about herself.

Why?

In little more than an hour, spread across two separate encounters, both he and Ariel had connected with Margo Haynes in deep, emotional, compelling ways. She’d given Ariel more welcome and solace than Ariel had known since Kendra’s death. To him, she’d offered concern for his daughter, opened the doors to friendship and infused him with desire.

He wanted more of her. Much more.

In the two years since Kendra’s death, he’d made Ariel the core of his life, and they’d done just fine together with Mrs. Whittaker’s help. So had everything changed three weeks ago when he’d lost his live-in housekeeper? Or only this afternoon, when Ariel first met Margo Haynes?

As he passed Margo’s house again, a sense of destiny infused him. He didn’t know anything about her, except that her concern and devotion for his daughter transcended logic. But he knew himself; and for himself, he wanted to get to know her better.

From her back window Margo could see Riley Corbett’s house. It was yellow, with white trim and shutters and a dark green roof. With a shake of her head, she leaned against the window frame. Riley Corbett seemed as friendly and guileless as any boy next door. But he was a cop. What would he think of her if he knew the truth? Did she have an obligation to tell him?

She shouldn’t have to. She’d paid her debt to society with three years in prison and seven more on parole. Finally free, she’d shaken the dust of the past from her feet, chosen a new name, closed her eyes and stuck her finger on the map. She’d picked the closest city with a university, and moved to Laramie. Approximately fifteen hundred miles from the gulf coast of Texas.

No one, not even the sheriff of her new town, needed to know of her past. Being his neighbor included no duty to reveal the deep dark secrets of her past. What was the point in creating a new life if she blurted out the truth the first time she felt a qualm?

Ever since the robbery she’d dealt with the consequences of her choices, never once turning away from the legal and logical repercussions. She hadn’t known Nick intended to hold up the convenience store. She hadn’t known he killed the clerk. But when he rushed out, pointed his gun at Holly and yelled at her to drive, she’d punched the gas for all she was worth. And from that moment until she’d moved away from Texas, Margo’s life had been hell.

At first she’d imagined that once she paid the penalty exacted by society, her slate would be wiped clean and she could move forward freely. Since her release from prison, however, she’d learned that regardless of the penalty, some things were never forgiven.

Serving her parole in her hometown, she’d been shunned, harassed, held up for public exhibition, and used as a cautionary tale for teenage girls. Her past followed wherever she went, no matter how straight a line she walked.

No one ever stopped to imagine her own personal grief over her role in the murder Nick committed. No one ever took into account that she’d lost her daughter as a result of her complicity.

Now she intended to start anew, and she wanted this new life more than she cared about her career or her immediate happiness. She couldn’t imagine a situation in which she would put it at risk. Certainly she wouldn’t jeopardize it because some man jump-started her libido after eleven years on hold.

Turning to the sink, she filled a glass with water and drank deeply. More than a decade had passed since that blackest point in her life, and she’d paid dearly for her mistakes. By honoring the law to the letter and by building a good strong career as a novelist, she’d proven to herself how completely she’d overcome her past. When her last book hit the best-seller list, she’d gained an independence that reinforced her freedom.

She had spent the seven years since her release from prison working to recreate herself. As a final step, she’d adapted her given name, using Margo instead of Maggie, and taken her mother’s maiden name to reinforce the new person she’d become. After so much work, she didn’t intend to risk everything just because some wayward twinge of conscience kept reminding her Margo Haynes was a lie. Especially when that twinge sprang from an emotion as dangerous as desire.

Chapter Three

“Good try, Riley,” Cassie McMurrin said with a laugh. “But I’m not about to become a day care center, even for you.”

In frustration, Riley crumpled a used envelope and pitched it into the wastebasket. In little more than an hour Ariel would be out of school, and he still didn’t have somewhere to take her. And if he wasn’t right at the door when the bell rang, she might decide to take off by herself again. No longer able to depend on her to wait, he’d run his schedule exactly by the school bell for two days straight.

He might as well just quit his job and be a stay-at-home dad, since he seemed to be getting less and less accomplished at work. To keep his stress from coming through in his voice, he grinned at the phone. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“I would, however, love to have Ariel this afternoon, if you can pick her up by six.”

“You’re an angel. I’ll bring her by as soon as school’s out.”

“Sam’ll be excited to have someone to play with.”

“Great. Thanks. I owe you one.”

The McMurrins had a ranch several miles out of town, where Cassie trained cutting horses and taught barrel racing. Riley had put her name at the bottom of his list of possible sitters for two reasons. First, she and Kendra had gone to school together, and he didn’t want to trespass on that old friendship. Second, he’d rather have Ariel somewhere in town. But after three weeks of trying to find a permanent solution, he’d broadened his perimeters.

Camille Whittaker had lived with him and Ariel since just after Kendra’s death, and he’d banked on having her forever. When she moved to Nebraska suddenly to take care of her very elderly mother, her departure had left him in the lurch. It was his own fault. He should have had a contingency plan. But everything had been going so well.

He was still trying to find a live-in. His hours were sporadic and unpredictable, and structured day care only worked well for nine-to-five types. He’d begun advertising in the university newspaper and had gotten a lot of calls, but students kept hours as erratic as his own and he hadn’t found one willing to give up a social life for someone else’s kid.

A sharp knock on his open office door brought him alert with a start.

Wade Ferguson strode in without waiting for an invitation and slapped the morning paper on his desk. “Looks like momentum’s building for that blasted golf course.”

“Damn.” Riley rolled his chair closer to the desk to see what had provoked Wade’s temper. With the important headline circled in a thick black line, he focused right on the article.

Ten months ago a group of concerned parents had banded together in an organization they called Legal Activities For Fun. They’d decided their teenagers were more likely to stay out of trouble if the kids had somewhere to hang out, so they’d made a proposal to the country commission to build facilities in Sage Creek, a piece of undeveloped land the county had held for years. They envisioned a playing field that could handle baseball and soccer, tennis courts, a club for dancing, pool and arcade games, and eventually an amphitheater for concerts and summer stock productions. They called it The LAFF Place. The mayor and both law enforcement agencies—police and sheriff—had backed the idea immediately.

Also immediately one of the county commissioners had introduced a proposal to build a golf course in Sage Creek. Cal Davenport presented it as an idea he’d been working on for a long time, although no whisper of it had reached Riley’s ears. Before long, an outspoken group not limited to golfers began voicing their support. Now there would be two choices for Sage Creek on the ballot, one for The LAFF Place and one for a golf course.

Although Cal Davenport depicted the golf course as a legitimate counter proposal, he worked on people’s fears. He claimed that inviting kids to congregate in Sage Creek would turn it into a war zone for gangs. He painted pictures of drugs, sex and violence, even though the proponents were volunteering their own resources to build it, and later their talents to coach sports and their time to monitor dances and other events.

Davenport’s shortsighted intolerance made Riley’s blood boil. A huge percentage of the resources of both his department in the county and the police department in the city was spent on juvenile crime. Drunkenness, vandalism, truancy, drug use, violence, reckless driving—he’d often wondered how much of it could be attributed to boredom.

He finished the article, which covered a meeting the opponents had held the night before, and tossed the paper back to Wade. “I’m starting to really hate the good commissioner.”

Hitting the intercom, Riley drummed his fingers on the desk until the line clicked open. “Liz, will you call Ellie at the radio station and tell her I want to make a plea for the youth park and have it look like news?”

Liz laughed. “You must have seen the paper. I’ll get right on it.”

When the intercom clicked closed, Wade snagged a chair with his boot, pulled it a little closer and sat down. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to come on too strong about this.”

“You have as little patience with the golf course bunch as I do.”

“But I’m not running for reelection.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

Wade’s grave tone gave Riley reason to listen. They’d joined the department as deputies the same year, and Wade had given him the first kick in the pants to run for sheriff. Wade had no aspirations for the job himself, but the political advice he’d given Riley had always been shrewd and consistent. “Okay, what?”

“Davenport’s acting like this issue is his ticket to reelection, and his enthusiasm for the golf course is winning him a lot of friends.”

“What does that have to do with my campaign?”

“If he views you as his opponent, you’re the one he’s going to fight.”

“Let him. He’s wrong, and if people understand the issue they’ll know he’s wrong. The county could pour three times as much money into crime prevention and not accomplish what The LAFF Place will. We’ve got everyone who cares about kids on our side. That’s a lot of committed voters.”

“Those committed voters will support you only if you’re still the favorite when the election rolls around. If Davenport can floor you, he’ll kick you while you’re down.”

Riley let Wade’s apprehension skim through his mind for about two seconds before shrugging it off. With almost six weeks until the election, he could deal with anything Davenport lobbed his way, and in the meantime, he had his hands full trying to find a child care solution for Ariel.