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He sort of laughed. The husky soft sound whispered over her, relaxed her quicker than anything else might have. “There won’t be a crowd rushing the door for the waitress job. Don’t worry about it.”
She needed to act normal. Not make him suspicious. “Oh, that’s good.”
“You’ve been a waitress before?”
She nodded. Liar, liar, pants on fire. She could have told him that she possessed a wealth of other skills. She’d charmed dignitaries during a state dinner at the Governor’s house. She’d persuaded a CEO of a major corporation to write a check for her favorite charity. She’d hobnobbed with high society. But she’d never worked a day in her life.
“Are you visiting someone here?”
Questions. How many questions would he ask? “No.” She’d chosen the town on a whim. She’d closed her eyes and had drawn a small imaginary circle on the Nevada map. Her well-manicured fingernail had zeroed in on Thunder Lake. She’d thought it sounded peaceful, envisioned huge pines and a deep blue-colored lake. In retrospect, she believed she should have run to a big city in another state instead of the small northern town in Nevada.
For a long moment, his eyes fixed on her face as if memorizing it. Then he took a more relaxed stance. She assumed he’d decided she wasn’t planning to break in. “Where are you staying?”
She had no idea. Uneasiness rushing through her again, she dodged his stare. Several hundred feet away, across the street, a sign for a motel flashed like a welcoming beacon in the night. She spotted the vacancy sign. More important were the words below it. Cheapest rates in town. “Over there,” she said, pointing.
A breeze whipped around her, tossing her hair. No longer paralyzed by fear, as the chilly April air sliced through her, she shivered.
“It’s cold. You should go to your room. Though this is a small town, it’s still not a good idea to be wandering around so late by yourself.”
“Late? Nine o’clock is late?” Obviously the streets rolled up early.
She supposed she looked as amazed by his words as she sounded because he offered an explanation. “It is in Thunder Lake. Except in summer when tourists come, it’s a quiet town. People work hard here, get up early, go to bed early.”
She heard pride in his voice when he talked. Without knowing a thing about Sheriff Sam Dawson, she’d make a guess that he was born and raised here.
“Sounds as if you’re used to big-city living.”
Instinctively she tensed. Be careful, she warned herself. He was trained to read between lines. “I’ll—I should go,” she said with a wave of her hand in the direction of the motel. Leaving quickly seemed the smartest thing to do. She gave him a semblance of a smile, hoped it convinced him that she wasn’t a fugitive on the run.
“Good night.”
She gave up her love affair with the diner door and inched forward. He still hadn’t moved. What now? she wondered, nerves jumping as she waited for him to step aside.
“Welcome to Thunder Lake, Jessica Scott.”
An almost nervous giggle of relief threatened to slip out. “Thank you.” Before she did something dumb and gave herself away, she sidestepped him, then hurried toward the street. She probably wouldn’t see him again, didn’t have to worry about him.
She passed his car, saw the emblem on the side, signifying Thunder Lake Sheriff’s Department. Great beginnings, Jessica. Less than half an hour in town, and she’d caught the eye of the local sheriff.
Still feeling edgy, when she reached the street, she dared a look back. He was standing by his car in the shadows. His face was hidden by the darkness, but she just knew he was still watching her.
Chapter Two
For a long moment, Sam stood by a kitchen window and watched a hummingbird hover near a feeder in his next-door neighbor’s silver oak. In April, days passed lazily. Before the tourist season of summer, his duties centered on too many meetings with the mayor about requisitions for new cars or uniforms, answering complaint calls and patrolling the town.
He heard chair legs scrape across the kitchen floor behind him, but instead of turning around, he let his mind wander to last night, to the woman he’d seen. About five foot seven and willowy, she’d hardly be a threat to anyone. He hadn’t seen her clearly, but she looked out of place standing alone, in the dark, reading a Help Wanted sign. He had questions, but had seen no purpose in keeping her. If she stuck around, got the job, he’d find out more.
As the smell of coffee drifted to him, he turned away from the window. Hinting of the warmer weather to come, bright morning sunlight bathed the kitchen in a warm glow. He moved to the coffee brewer, and began counting drips, waiting for the last one to drop. He needed to quit or cut down, do something. He’d given up smoking long ago, but still needed a quick fix of caffeine to get going in the morning.
“I want to eat the chocolate bears, Daddy.”
Grabbing a blue mug from a cup tree first, he swivelled a look over his shoulder at Casey. On a yawn, his youngest plopped on a chair at the kitchen table.
“You should have something more nutrichess for breakfast. Shouldn’t she, Daddy?” her older sister piped in. At six, Annie believed in her ability to mother her dolls, her younger sister and sometimes him.
At certain moments, she looked so much like his late wife that his heart twisted. Rail thin, she had shiny brown hair that she’d recently asked to have cut in some trendy bob style. He hadn’t resisted. The short cut meant no more mornings struggling with a hair clip or one of those doughnut-looking cloth things, or having to French braid her hair. Now there was a challenge. Give him a perp in an alley any day.
He smiled at the thought. He hadn’t encountered one in five years, since he and a pregnant Christina had left Las Vegas, when he’d chosen to be a small-town sheriff instead of another big-city cop.
“Daddy, I want them,” Casey insisted, her bottom lip thrusting out.
Back to the chocolate bears.
“There aren’t enough left for even one bowl,” Annie piped in. “Daddy didn’t go to the grocery store yesterday.”
Sam cringed at the accusing tone in her voice. She could make that transgression sound like the crime of the century.
Disbelief edged his youngest daughter’s voice. “Didn’t you, Daddy?” His urchin. With her silky blond hair brushing her shoulders, at four, Casey cared more about making mud pies and riding her new bike with the training wheels than her looks. While her sister had mastered a tone that one day would deliver a reprimand with a few choice words, Sam’s youngest needed to say nothing. With one look, she’d drill someone into the ground. He watched her blue eyes narrow. She was a second away from leveling that look at him.
“I bought some,” he told her.
Sunshine returned. “You did?” Her face broke into a smile.
Saved by a quick stop at a convenience store last night, Sam mused. “I did.”
Annie delivered a pleased grin. “That’s good. If there hadn’t been more, I would have given you my share,” she assured her sister.
Sam closed one eye in her direction. Who was that strange child sitting there? Was this some new phase she was embarking on? He sure had a hard time keeping up. He opened the box of cereal, poured it in two bowls, and set them on the table.
With the girls busy crunching away on the chocolate bears that were swimming in milk and turning it the color of cocoa, he finally poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d bought one of those two-cup coffee brewers for his survival. He never had time to wait for a full pot, and figured there was less waste this way.
“Mrs. Mulvane is here,” Casey said with the opening of the back door.
Sam gazed over the rim of the coffee cup at the girls’ nanny.
“Good morning.” Arlene Mulvane’s voice cracked with her bright, cheery greeting. The elderly woman, a grandmother of four, and great-grandmother of two, lumbered into the kitchen. Several months ago after his third nanny had quit, she’d arrived at the door, and said she would take the job. He’d wondered if Arlene and several of the other town do-gooders had drawn straws to see which of them would volunteer to help “the poor dear man alone with those two little girls.” Regardless, Arlene had blended in well, treated the girls like her own granddaughters. Though she didn’t live in, she would stay late when he couldn’t get home on time.
“And we’re going to the fire station on our next field trip,” Annie was informing Arlene.
Casey offered her opinion. “The lizard farm is better.”
“Yuk!” Annie screwed up her nose, but her bright blue eyes shifted to Sam. “Don’t forget our date.”
He assumed the day would come when some other male would receive that eager look. For now, he had exclusive rights to it. “I won’t forget.”
“Around twelve-thirty?” Arlene asked.
Sam nodded, then drained the coffee in his cup. On Saturday when they had no school, they met him for lunch. “I’ll be at the diner.”
The bell above the diner door jingled. Crowded, noisy, the diner, with its blue-and-white decor, held the aroma of perked coffee and freshly baked cinnamon buns. One of the waitresses poured coffee into two thick mugs and plunked them down in front of customers at the counter. Country music from a jukebox played in the background. Another waitress balanced plates along her arm and weaved her way to a booth near the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Jessica had arrived at the diner before dawn broke. Dew had clung to the ground. Now the sun lightened a sky lavish with clouds.
Hurrying toward a customer who’d asked for another glass of water, she was having a terrible morning. Twice, she’d messed up orders. She wondered why she hadn’t expected problems. After all, she’d bluffed her way into the waitress job this morning, but she’d truly believed she could handle it. How foolish, Jessica.
At the end of the counter, two construction workers from a nearby site waited for a bottle of Tabasco sauce to pour on their eggs, and the fellow in the last booth who she hadn’t gotten to yet scowled at the clock on the wall.
“Scott! Your order’s up,” Herb yelled.
It took a moment to remember to respond to the name. When she’d applied for the job, Herb had questioned why her identification said Walker. She’d claimed she hadn’t changed her name back, let him assume Walker was a married name. Briefly she’d held her breath, worried, but busy and distracted, he’d handed her a shirt and had registered no recognition to the Walker name.
Pivoting around, she picked up orders. She abandoned any notion of balancing the plates on her arm. With one in each hand, she started for the table. Better to make several trips than to dump the breakfast on the floor.
“This isn’t what I ordered,” the man growled when she’d set down his plate.
Sure it was. She was certain she’d gotten the order right. “I’ll take care of that, sir.”
She placed her reorder, then grabbed the coffee pot to fill cups. At the end of the counter, one customer, a petite woman in her mid-sixties with bright red hair and a broad smile, had been watching her ever since she’d entered the diner. Since all the servers and Herb had stopped to talk to her, Jessica assumed the woman was a regular customer.
“Name’s Trudy Holtrum,” the woman said. “I heard there was a new waitress.”
Jessica paused and filled the woman’s coffee cup. “I’m Jessica Scott.”
Trudy bobbed her head as if looking for a yes answer to a question not yet asked. “Have you met the sheriff yet?”
Jessica started to frown. Why would she ask such a question? “Yes, why?”
“I work for him,” Trudy explained. “Lots of women in town are willing to give him a run for his money. Are you?”
“Pardon?” Though stunned by her candor, Jessica laughed.
Hazel eyes met hers with heart-stopping directness. “Don’t you find him attractive?”
Jessica couldn’t mask her incredulity. “What? I don’t even know—”
Nothing fazed the woman. “Better than that, huh?” She peered over her wire-rimmed glasses at Jessica. “Handsome? Sexy?”
Politeness stretched only so far, Jessica decided. “Trudy, I don’t think—”
The charms on her bracelet clattered as she set down her coffee cup. “Oh, he’s sexy, all right.” Grinning, she placed her hands on the counter and heaved herself to a stand.
“See you,” Jessica said.
“Likely.” The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Since you and the sheriff might be an item.”
Jessica laughed as Trudy ambled toward the door. The woman was eccentric, probably a gossip and delightful.
As the breakfast rush dwindled down, she refilled water glasses, checked sugar containers and set up several sets of silverware.
By eleven-thirty, the lunch crowd began to wander in. Tables filled quickly. Every stool at the counter was occupied. She noticed that no one sat in her first booth and wondered if she’d already earned a reputation for dropping dishes, and people were avoiding her.
At twelve-thirty, she learned that she had nothing to do with the booth being left empty. She was in the middle of delivering an order of meat loaf when the bell jingled, announcing a customer and she heard Herb’s greeting. “Afternoon, Sam. Your usual booth is waiting for you.”
The sheriff’s usual booth was the empty one in her station.
What happened next really was his fault, she decided. He shouldn’t have been so good-looking. Then she wouldn’t have been eyeing him instead of watching where she was going. She wouldn’t have dropped the tray of dishes.
Plates clattered to the black-and-white tile floor of Herb’s Diner. Heads swung in Jessica’s direction. And her boss, Herb scowled.
Feeling knots in her shoulders, she rolled them slightly before she began picking up the glass.
A broom in her hand, Cory Winston sidled close to Jessica and began to sweep splintered glass in a pile. “Let me give you a hand.” A bottle blond in her early thirties, Cory had worked for Herb since she’d graduated from high school. “Don’t feel bad, hon,” she said low. “Every single female in town notices him.”
Jessica raised a hand and nudged back a few strands of her auburn hair. Him, she assumed, was the sheriff.
“But don’t get your hopes up. He’s a widower, and not looking.”
“Oh, that wasn’t—”
Cory pushed to a stand before Jessica could explain that she wasn’t interested. Better for Cory to think she was as attracted to the sheriff as every other female. She couldn’t have explained that she’d been like a runaway bride. What would she say? I’m on the run. Hiding from my family. Don’t tell the sheriff. As much as Jessica liked Cory, she couldn’t trust her with that secret. “I feel as if I’m on his wanted list,” she said, aware of his unwavering stare on her.
Cory laughed, but a speculative tone colored her voice. “He is giving you a lot of attention.”
Too much, Jessica thought. She frowned at the broken plate on the floor before her. She would rouse his suspicions if she didn’t stop acting so nervous.
There was no real reason for it. Neither her mother nor her grandfather would have notified Willow Springs or any other Nevada police or sheriff departments that she was missing. Her mother’s grand sense of propriety demanded a more discreet method for finding her daughter, like a private investigator.
While Jessica gathered the last of the large pieces of broken plates and cups, the diner’s dishwasher mopped up the slivers of glass. Jessica thanked him, then hurried behind the counter. Nearby Herb glared. How much would he deduct from her pay for that accident? She needed every penny. For someone who’d never worried about money before, she’d become obsessed with the lack of it lately.
Plastering a smile to her face, she scribbled a customer’s order for blueberry pancakes on a ticket. He was a local delivery man, and he’d flirted earlier with her until Cory had commented about his wife and baby girl. Now he halfheartedly smiled, then buried his face in his newspaper. She wished another man would follow suit and not give her so much attention.
Sam considered it part of his job as sheriff to learn about anyone new in town.
Any stranger would have aroused his curiosity. That sounded like a reasonable excuse for keeping an eye on the new waitress at Herb’s Diner as she scurried from the cook’s station with several plates of pancakes.
But Sam rarely lied to himself. His curiosity about a stranger only partially accounted for his interest in her. True, she looked out of place. Too classy-looking even in the brand-new jeans, snow-white sneakers, and the diner’s only concession to a uniform, a blue polo shirt.
She was a leggy woman with shiny auburn-colored hair caught back at the nape of the neck and held in place by a giant gold clip. She had an oval face, soft blue eyes, a straight nose, and a generous mouth. Plain and simple, the woman was a knockout.
Distracted by male voices raised in disagreement, he observed Morly Wells, sitting at a nearby table. A day didn’t pass without an argument about something between the retired postal worker and his best friend, Lloyd Guthrie. Sam listened for a moment to them, then shot a look at the clock on the wall above the counter. The girls were late. He thought about a half-finished quarterly statement on his desk that was due in the mayor’s office by the end of the week. He should be thinking about budgets and requisitions.
He would have been, but he looked up from the menu and saw Jessica Scott smile. Not at him, but an old-timer at the counter. Something slow moved through him. He was surprised by it though he shouldn’t have been. He’d always been a sucker for a sunshiny smile. But a long time had passed since a woman had really captured his interest. Not since a year and a half ago—when his wife had died.
The clatter of silverware on the floor made him look again in the direction of Herb’s new server. The woman had her problems. He saw her picking up the cutlery she’d dropped. While she walked with finishing school grace, she bordered on klutzy. She stopped before Morly to fill his coffee cup, and knocked over a glass of water. Morly jumped back before he wore it. She won’t last a week, Sam decided.
Crouching, Jessica gathered the silverware and dumped it on a tray. As she expected, she received the dishwasher’s glare. When had she gotten so clumsy, she wondered?
On a sigh, she turned around. Unable to put off the inevitable, she drew a deep breath and headed toward the first booth in her station, toward Sam Dawson.
