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“Of course I am.”
He sighed and pulled her close. “Now, that’s exactly the sort of thing that makes a man feel good about himself, when some sweet little woman worries about him.”
“I’m not little, I’m not sweet and I don’t usually worry,” she pointed out.
“It’s okay if you worry about me,” he teased. “As long as you don’t do it excessively.”
She toyed with the top button of his unbuttoned jacket. “There are lots of safer professions than being a police chief.”
He frowned. “You’re kidding, right?”
She grimaced. “Ted, Joe Brown’s wife was one of my uncle’s friends. She was married to that deputy sheriff who was shot to death a few years ago. She said that she spent their whole married lives sitting by the phone at night, almost shaking with worry every time he had to go out on a case, hoping and praying that he’d come home alive.”
His hands on her slender waist had tightened unconsciously. “Anyone who marries someone in law enforcement has to live with that possibility,” he said slowly.
She bit her lower lip. She was seeing herself sitting by the phone at night, pacing the floor. She was prone to worry anyway. She was very fond of Ted. She didn’t want him to die. But right now, she wasn’t in love. She had time to think about what she wanted to do with her life. She was sure she should give this a lot of thought before she dived headfirst into a relationship with him that might lead very quickly to marriage. She’d heard people talk about how it was when people became very physical with each other, that it was so addictive that they couldn’t bear to be apart at all. Once that happened, she wouldn’t have a chance to see things rationally.
Ted could almost see the thoughts in her mind. Slowly he released her and stepped back.
She felt the distance, and it was more than physical. He was drawing away in every sense.
She looked up at him. She drew in a long breath. “I’m not sure I’m ready, Ted.”
“Ready for what?”
That stiffness in him was disturbing, but she had to be honest. “I’m not sure I’m ready to think about marriage.”
His black eyes narrowed. “Jillian, if we don’t get married, there’s a California developer who’s going to make this place into hot real estate with tourist impact, and Sammy could end up on a platter.”
She felt those words like a body blow. Her eyes, tormented, met his. “But it’s not fair, to rush into something without having time to think about it!” she exclaimed. “The wills didn’t say we have to get married tomorrow! There’s no real time limit!”
There was, but he wasn’t going to push her. She had cold feet. She didn’t know him that well, despite the years they’d been acquainted, and she wasn’t ready for the physical side of marriage. She had hang-ups, and good reasons to have them.
“Okay,” he said after a minute. “Suppose we just get to know each other and let the rest ride for a while? ”
“You mean, go on dates and stuff?”
He pursed his lips. “Yes. Dates and stuff.”
She noticed how handsome he was. In a crowd, he always stood out. He was a vivid sort of person, not like she was at all. But they did enjoy the same sorts of things and they got along, most of the time.
“I would like to see your place,” she said.
“I’ll come and get you Saturday morning,” he said quietly.
He waited for her answer with bridled impatience. She could see that. He wasn’t sure of her at all. She hated being so hesitant, but it was a rushed business. She would have to make a decision in the near future or watch Uncle John’s ranch become a resort. It didn’t bear thinking about. On the other hand, if she said yes to Ted, it would mean a relationship that she was certain she wasn’t ready for.
“Stop gnawing your lip off and say yes,” Ted told her. “We’ll work out the details as we go along.”
She sighed. “Okay, Ted,” she said after a minute.
He hadn’t realized that he’d been holding his breath. He smiled slowly. She was going to take the chance. It was a start.
“Okay.” He frowned. “You don’t have any low-cut blouses and jeans that look like you’ve been poured into them, do you? ”
“Ted!”
“Well, I was just wondering,” he said. “Because if you do, you can’t wear them over at my place. We have a dress code.”
“A dress code.” She nodded. “So your cowboys have to wear dresses.” She nodded again.
He burst out laughing. He bent and kissed her, hard, but impersonally, and walked down the steps. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
“You call that a kiss?” she yelled after him, and shocked herself with the impertinent remark that had jumped out of her so impulsively.
But he didn’t react to it the way she expected. He just threw up his hand and kept walking.
They worked side by side in his kitchen making lunch. He was preparing an omelet while she made cinnamon toast and fried bacon.
“Breakfast for lunch,” she scoffed.
“Hey, I very often have breakfast for supper, if I’ve been out on a case,” he said indignantly. “There’s no rule that says you have to have breakfast in the morning.”
“I suppose not.”
“See, you don’t know how to break rules.”
She gasped. “You’re a police chief! You shouldn’t be encouraging anybody to break rules.”
“It’s okay as long as it’s only related to food,” he replied.
She laughed, shaking her head.
“You going to turn that bacon anytime soon?” he asked, nodding toward it, “or do you really like it raw on one side and black on the other?”
“If you don’t like it that way, you could fry it yourself.”
“I do omelets,” he pointed out. “I don’t even eat bacon.”
“What?”
“Pig meat,” he muttered.
“I like bacon!”
“Good. Then you can eat it. I’ve got a nice country ham all carved up and cooked in the fridge. I’ll have that with mine.”
“Ham is pig meat, too!”
“I think of it as steak with a curly tail,” he replied.
She burst out laughing. He was so different off the job. She’d seen him walking down the sidewalk in town, somber and dignified, almost unapproachable. Here, at home, he was a changed person.
“What are you brooding about?” he wondered.
“Was I? I was just thinking how different you are at home than at work.”
“I should hope so,” he sighed, as he took the omelet up onto a platter. “I mean, think of the damage to my image if I cooked omelets for the prisoners.”
“Chief Barnes used to,” she said. “I remember Uncle John talking about what a sweet man he was. He’d take the prisoners himself to funerals when they had family members die, and in those days, when the jail was down the hall from the police department, he’d cook for them, too.”
“He was a kind man,” Ted agreed solemnly.
“To think that it was one of the prisoners who killed him,” she added quietly as she turned the bacon. “Of all the ironies.”
“The man was drunk at the time,” Ted said. “And, if you recall, he killed himself just a few weeks later while he was waiting for trial. He left a note saying he didn’t want to put the chief’s family through any more pain.”
“Everybody thought that was so odd,” she said. “But people forget that murderers are just like everybody else. They aren’t born planning to kill people.”
“That’s true. Sometimes it’s alcohol or drugs that make them do it. Other times it’s an impulse they can’t control. Although,” he added, “there are people born without a conscience. They don’t mind killing. I’ve seen them in the military. Not too many, thank goodness, but they come along occasionally.”
“Your friend who was a sniper, was he like that?”
“Not at all,” he said. “He was trained to think of it as just a skill. It was only later, when it started to kill his soul, that he realized what was happening to him. That was when he got out.”
“How in the world did he get into law enforcement, with such a background?” she wondered.
He chuckled. “Uncle Sam often doesn’t know when his left hand is doing something different than his right one,” he commented. “Government agencies have closed files.”
“Oh. I get it. But those files aren’t closed to everyone, are they?”
“They’re only accessible to people with top-secret military clearance.” He glanced at her amusedly. “Never knew a civilian, outside the executive branch, who even had one.”
“That makes sense.”
He pulled out her chair for her.
“Thank you,” she said, with surprise in her tone.
“I’m impressing you with my good manners,” he pointed out as he sat down across from her and put a napkin in his lap.
“I’m very impressed.” She tasted the omelet, closed her eyes and sighed. “And not only with your manners. Ted, this is delicious!”
He grinned. “Thanks.”
“What did you put in it?” she asked, trying to decide what combination of spices he’d used to produce such a taste.
“Trade secret.”
“You can tell me,” she coaxed. “After all, we’re almost engaged.”
“The ‘almost’ is why I’m not telling,” he retorted. “If things don’t work out, you’ll be using my secret spices in your own omelets for some other man.”
“I could promise.”
“You could, but I’m not telling.”
She sighed. “Well, it’s delicious, anyway.”
He chuckled. “The bacon’s not bad, either,” he conceded, having forgone the country ham that would need warming. He was hungry.
“Thanks.” She lifted a piece of toast and gave it a cold look. “Shame we can’t say the same for the toast. Sorry. I was busy trying not to burn the bacon, so I burned the toast instead.”
“I don’t eat toast.”
“I do, but I don’t think I will this time.” She pushed the toast aside.
After they ate, he walked her around the property. He only had a few beef steers in the pasture. He’d bought quite a few Angus cattle with his own uncle, and they were at the ranch that Jillian had shared with her uncle John. She was pensive as she strolled beside him, absently stripping a dead branch of leaves, thinking about the fate of Uncle John’s prize beef if she didn’t marry Ted sometime soon.
“Deep thoughts?” he asked, hands in the pockets of his jeans under his shepherd’s coat.
She frowned. She was wearing her buckskin jacket. One of the pieces of fringe caught on a limb and she had to stop to disentangle it. “I was thinking about that resort,” she confessed.
“Here. Let me.” He stopped and removed the branch from the fringe. “Do you know why these jackets always had fringe?”
She looked up at him, aware of his height and strength so close to her. He smelled of tobacco and coffee and fir trees. “Not really.”
He smiled. “When the old-timers needed something to tie up a sack with, they just pulled off a piece of fringe and used that. Also, the fringe collects water and drips it away from the body.”
“My goodness!”
“My grandmother was full of stories like that. Her grandfather was a fur trapper. He lived in the Canadian wilderness. He was French. He married a Blackfoot woman.”
She smiled, surprised. “But you always talk about your Cheyenne heritage.”
“That’s because my other grandmother was Cheyenne. I have interesting bloodlines.”
Her eyes sketched his high-cheekboned face, his black eyes and hair and olive complexion. “They combined to make a very handsome man.”
“Me?” he asked, surprised.
She grinned. “And not a conceited bone in your body, either, Ted.”
He smiled down at her. “Not much to be conceited about.”
“Modest, too.”
He shrugged. He touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You have beautiful skin.”
