When he saw her lying there, the first sensation that swept over Reese was relief.

He might resent Neely like hell, might wish she’d disappear from his life and his memory, but he didn’t want her dead, hurt or in danger.

The second sensation was…hard to identify. Something weak. Soft. Damnably foolish…

She looked so fragile. Vulnerable. There was a part of him—the part that remembered loving her—that wanted to close the door and lock them inside this safe place, then gather her into his arms and simply hold her.

Thank God the rest of him knew better than to give in to such weakness.

The Sheriff’s Surrender
Marilyn Pappano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARILYN PAPPANO

brings impeccable credentials to her writing career—a lifelong habit of gazing out windows, not paying attention in class, daydreaming and spinning tales for her own entertainment. The sale of her first book brought great relief to her family, proving that she wasn’t crazy but was, instead, creative. Since then she’s sold more than forty books to various publishers and even a film production company.

She writes in an office nestled among the oaks that surround her country home. In winter she stays inside with her husband and their four dogs, and in summer she spends her free time mowing the yard that never stops growing and daydreams about grass that never gets taller than two inches.

You can write to her at P.O. Box 643, Sapulpa, OK, 74067-0643.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Reese Barnett drove slowly down the main street of Killdeer, Kansas, his gaze sweeping side to side, across empty buildings and lots to empty parking spaces. The town was small, a nowhere place, and unremarkable except for the fact that it lay about halfway between Kansas City and Heartbreak, Oklahoma. Grass grew in cracks in the sidewalks, and the few buildings left standing were unoccupied—a grocery store, a gas station, a café. The place had never been prosperous, and these days, except for a combination gas station-grocery store-post office-restaurant on the edge of town and a handful of sorry houses, it was damn near a ghost town.

It was, according to his cousin Jace, a good place for a meeting.

Reese pulled into a parking lot that filled half the block and found a bit of shade underneath a blackjack oak. He parked facing the street, rolled down the windows, then shut off the engine. He was early for the meeting. Jace had asked him to show up first, to look around and make certain nothing seemed out of place. The only thing out of place was him, furtively scoping out a down-on-its-luck town with a population of maybe twenty, if he counted the stray cats and dogs.

Reaching for the cell phone, he dialed Jace’s number. Jace answered on the third ring, skipped the greeting and went straight to business. “Where are you?”

“Sitting in front of what used to be a grocery store in the heart of what used to be a town.”

“Everything okay?”

“No traffic, no people. Only the critters are out and about.”

“Good. We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Reese said dryly, then disconnected. He didn’t have much of a clue about what was going on. All he knew was that he’d gotten a call from Jace that morning, asking for his help. Since he was in the help-giving business—his official title was Canyon County Sheriff—and since Barnetts never said no to family if they could help it, he’d taken a day off work. He’d followed Jace’s instructions and left his uniform and badge at home. His black-and-white Blazer, complete with a shield on each door and a light bar on the roof, was parked at his house. He’d driven his own truck, worn jeans and a chambray shirt, boots and a straw Resistol.

Also per Jace’s instructions, his Sig Sauer P-220 .45-caliber pistol was tucked between the seat and the console, his five-shot .38 was holstered at the small of his back, and his department-issue 12-gauge pump shotgun was within easy reach behind the seat. He was ready for damn near anything.

He did know one other detail—the favor Jace was asking of him involved baby-sitting. It would be for just a few days, his cousin had promised. All Reese had to do was keep this witness safe and breathing for a week, no more, while Jace wrapped up the case back in Kansas City, where he was a detective with the K.C. Police Department. Male or female, young, old, honest citizen or cowardly informant—Reese knew none of that. He didn’t even know what crime the person had been a witness to.

But he was about to get a few answers.

The car that turned into the parking lot was a midsize sedan with heavily tinted side and back windows. He recognized Jace behind the wheel, but couldn’t tell anything about the passenger. He stepped out of his truck as Jace parked beside it. Thanks to the window tint and the hat the passenger wore, Reese still couldn’t tell much, although he presumed it was a woman. The hat was too fussy by far for a man.

Jace climbed out of the car and met Reese’s gaze over the roof. Though they were the same age, the only sons of brothers who could have passed for twins, there was no family resemblance at all. Reese looked like their dads—brown hair, brown eyes—while Jace looked more like his Osage mother’s family with black hair, bronzed skin and eyes so dark they seemed black.

“I appreciate your doing this,” Jace said.

“Do I get an explanation, or do you plan to just drop her and run?”

“She’s a lawyer who’s been getting death threats. Last week someone tried to make good on them, so I put her in a safe house that turned out to be not so safe. Last night someone tried again.”

“Which suggests that either your guy is damned lucky…or you’ve got a traitor in the department.”

Jace nodded grimly.

“And no one knows where you’ve taken her now.”

“She doesn’t even have a clue herself. At this moment, only you and I know she’ll be in Heartbreak.”

“She have any bags?”

“Just one.” Jace opened the trunk and lifted out a pricey leather suitcase. “If you have to get in touch with me, call my cell phone and leave a message for me to call, nothing more. And keep an eye on her. So far, she’s been pretty cooperative, but that could change. And keep her safe. I really want to make this case.”

While Jace opened the passenger door, Reese turned and stowed the suitcase in the cargo space at the rear of his truck. He turned back just in time to come face-to-face with the witness as she got out of the car. He stared, and she stared back. Even with the hat shadowing her face, he could see she was stunned—though no more than he.

Neely Madison. Criminal defense lawyer. Former friend. Former lover. And Reese’s worst nightmare.

She looked as incredible as ever—tall, slender, perfect. Underneath the straw hat that sported a giant sunflower, a few strands of silky light brown hair parted across her forehead. Her eyes were brown, too, and too big for her face, giving her an innocent-waif look…but looks were often deceiving. There was nothing innocent or waifish about her. Nothing perfect about her, either.

Clenching his jaw, he pulled the suitcase out and dropped it to the ground with enough force to scuff the expensive leather. He slammed the door hard enough to rock the truck, then headed for the driver’s side.

Before he reached the door, Jace grabbed his arm. “Come on, Reese, you agreed—”

“Only because I didn’t know it was her. And you didn’t tell me because you knew I’d say no.”

“You can’t walk away. Her life is in danger. Someone’s trying to kill her!”

Reese jerked his arm free and faced his cousin. “Good! I wish him luck.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Breathing in short, controlled puffs, Reese stared stonily at Jace. Did he wish Neely was dead? He wished he’d never met her, wished he’d never touched her, never wanted her, never needed her. Hell, he wished she’d never been born…but that was a whole different matter from wishing her dead.

And not wanting her dead was a whole different matter from risking his own life to keep her safe.

Well aware that she could hear him from the other side of the truck, Reese coldly, flatly said, “Don’t bet on it.” Then his anger surged again. “Why in hell didn’t you tell me it was her this morning? It would have saved us all the trip. And why did you think I’d give a damn about keeping her safe? After everything that happened, everything she did—”

“Because I know you.”

“Not well enough. Not if you think I’d agree to this.”

For one long moment after another, they stared at each other. Reese was only faintly aware of a bee buzzing nearby, of the sun’s heat beating down and the sweat that trickled down his spine. He was all too aware of Neely, seen from the corner of his eye, still standing at the sedan’s door, one hand gripping the hot metal, that silly, floppy hat unmoving. He scowled at Jace, who scowled back just as fiercely.

It was Jace who broke the silence. His words were reasonable, his tone aggravated, his expression belligerent. “I asked you for help in protecting a witness, and you agreed. You can’t back out now. It’s not my fault you didn’t ask the pertinent questions. We had an agreement, bubba. Now you have to honor it.”

“I assumed you’d offered the pertinent information.”

“You know what they say about assuming things,” Jace said mildly. Then he sighed and lowered his voice. “You’re right. I figured you’d try to say no if you knew up front that it was Neely. That’s why I didn’t tell you. But I also know you’re professional enough to not let your personal feelings interfere with your job. Regardless of how you feel about her or what happened between you two in the past, she’s the victim of a crime. And you’re a cop, and you’ll do your damnedest to keep her safe.”

Reese shook his head. “Bring me a thief, a hooker or a murderer, and I’ll do what I can. Bring me a real victim, and I’ll do whatever it takes to protect ’em. But not her. She’s not a victim—she turns other people into victims—and damned if I’ll do anything that makes it possible for her to continue destroying lives.”

“Get over it, Reese,” Jace said scornfully. “It was nine years ago, and it wasn’t her fault.”

Nine years. He said it as if it were a lifetime, and in a way, to Reese it felt like one. In other ways, it seemed as if it were just last week. He’d never forgotten the anger, the bitterness, the hurt, the shame. He’d never quite gotten over the loss and the guilt. And it was her fault. If she hadn’t been so stubborn, so convinced that she was right and everyone else was wrong, if she hadn’t been so damned unreasonable…

“If she were living in Canyon County, you’d take her into protective custody without a second thought,” Jace said accusingly.

“But she doesn’t live there. She’s not our problem.”

“She became your problem the moment you said ‘Sure, Jace, I’d be happy to help you out.’” Jace ran his fingers through his hair. “You’ve blamed her for what happened to Judy Miller for nine years. Well, bubba, if I take her back to the city and the next attempt on her life succeeds, you’ll be far more responsible for that than she ever was for Miller. Do you want to live with that on your conscience?”

Reese wanted to shrug, to reply that it made no difference to him. He wanted to climb into his truck, drive away and never give this meeting—or Neely—another thought. He wanted to go back to the moment he’d answered the phone that morning and say “Sorry, Jace, don’t have the manpower, don’t have the budget, can’t help you.”

Well, he couldn’t go back in time, but he could drive away and leave his cousin and Neely standing there. And what if he did? What if Jace took her back to the city and she was killed? He would be responsible, because he could have guaranteed her safety but had refused. It would prove he was no better, no more honorable, than she was.

And he needed to be better than she was.

But to have her back in his life, living temporarily in his house, bringing back all the bad memories and nightmares, making his present as damned impossible as his past…. Did he need anything that badly?

It was an effort to unclench his jaw, to force out words he didn’t want to say. “Only until you find another place for her. Today and tomorrow. That’s all you get. If she’s still here then, she’s going in the Canyon County jail.”

Jace looked as if he wanted to argue, but knew better. Instead he nodded grimly. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something set up. Thanks, bubba.”

For a moment Reese simply stared at the hand his cousin offered, then grudgingly shook hands with him, then hugged him. “Today and tomorrow. And don’t think I don’t mean it.” After releasing Jace, he climbed into the truck, started the engine and turned the air conditioner to high. He refused to look as Jace approached Neely, and he rolled up the window so he wouldn’t have to hear their conversation. He couldn’t believe his cousin—his best friend, the closest thing he had to a brother—had put him in this mess, couldn’t believe he’d just agreed to take Neely Madison, of all people, into his home.

He was a better cousin and friend than Jace deserved.

Either that, or a damned fool.

As Jace picked up her suitcase, Neely stared at the dirty plate-glass windows that stretched across the front of the abandoned market. Sale prices were painted across the glass in faded white: Ground Beef, 3 Pounds/$1.00 and Bread, 5 Loaves/$1.00. Obviously the place had been empty a long, long time. In Kansas City, the windows would have been broken out by vandals years ago, the entire building either burned or torn down, but here in tiny Killdeer, not a single rock had been thrown.

At least, not the solid-in-your-hand mineral kind. Reese had gotten in a few good verbal tosses. He’d always been good with words, the sweet, tender kind as well as the cut-her-heart-out-and-leave-her-bleeding sort. This time she couldn’t even blame him. Jace had played a dirty trick on them both, and she was no happier about it than Reese.

She was about to climb into the sedan for the long drive back home when Jace caught her hand. “Whoa, darlin’, wrong vehicle. You’re going with him, remember?”

She looked back at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I don’t kid about my job or your life. Reese has agreed to hide you out for a couple of days while I find someplace else for you. C’mon.”

“I don’t want to go with him, Jace. I’d feel safer in Kansas City.”

“Neely—”

“You heard what he said. He doesn’t give a damn whether Forbes kills me. He doesn’t want me here.” She managed to say the words evenly, without any hint of the hurt they caused deep inside. There had been a time when Reese had claimed to love her with all his heart, and she’d believed him with all her heart. But when she’d needed him desperately, he’d turned on her. He’d looked at her, lying in a pool of her own blood, and he’d walked away. And she’d never been the same again—not the same lawyer, the same woman or the same naive, trusting fool.

“You know he didn’t mean that.”

She wished she did, wished she could be certain of that, if nothing else. But she couldn’t convince herself and made no effort to lie to Jace. “Take me to Tulsa or Oklahoma City. There are places I can go, people who will help me, people who wouldn’t rather see me dead.”

“What people? Your sisters? Your mother? Your old friends? Those are the first places Forbes is going to look for you. Do you want to put their lives in danger as well as your own?”

She felt the blood drain from her face. She already had Judy Miller’s death on her conscience. She couldn’t bear to be responsible for one more person’s suffering. At least Reese was a cop. He knew the dangers and was prepared for them.

“I can stay to myself,” she said hopefully. “I can dye my hair, change my name, dress differently, talk differently and take a leisurely tour of all the places I’ve never been. I can keep moving, never spend two nights in the same place, switch identities every time I cross a state line.”

Jace shook his head as he pulled her away from the car and toward Reese’s truck. “It’s too risky. Hell, I don’t even like you standing here in the parking lot this long. C’mon. It’s just for a couple of days. You can endure anything for two days.”

Maybe so. She’d survived the last nine years. But she’d still rather take her chances alone.

Before he could open the pickup door, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. “In case I don’t see you again, thanks for everything.”

“You’ll see me again. This is just for a few days. We’ll get you someplace safe, make our case against Forbes and put the bastard away again—for good this time. Then you can go back to life as normal.”

She wished she believed him, wished she was that optimistic, but the sick feeling in her stomach suggested otherwise.

He kissed her forehead, then pushed her back and opened the truck door. Swallowing hard, she climbed inside, fastened her seat belt, then raised her hand in a forlorn wave as Reese put the truck in motion.

The temperature inside the vehicle was frigid enough to raise goose bumps on her bare arms, but she suspected it had more to do with the driver than the air-conditioning. She didn’t look at him and couldn’t speak to him—couldn’t do anything but sit stiffly in her seat, head turned to stare out the side window. They left Killdeer soon enough, leaving her nothing to look at but trees, pasture and an occasional house, but that was hands-down better than the hatred she knew she would see if she looked at him.

The miles passed in strained silence, and the muscles in her neck grew taut from holding her unnatural position so long. Gradually, an inch or two at a time, she turned to face forward, then risked the quickest of glances at Reese from the corner of her eye. He was gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to make his knuckles turn white, and his posture was rigid and unyielding. Just like his attitude.

Of course the past nine years that had been so difficult for her hadn’t left a mark on him. He was older, handsomer, tougher. In denim and chambray, with the cream-colored cowboy hat, he looked like every woman’s dream of a gorgeous, sexy cowboy. Put him astride a horse, and hearts would swoon all over the place. Even without the horse, he was more than capable of stirring wicked fantasies.

The first time she’d ever seen him, she’d swooned. He’d just recovered from the shoulder injury that had ended his pitching career with the Kansas City Royals, and had gone to work for the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department. She’d been practicing law in the county seat of Thomasville. She couldn’t have cared less that he was a former hot-shot baseball player. Sports didn’t interest her much. But she’d been damned impressed with the man himself.

Too bad he’d never thought much of her.

Not even when he was claiming to love her.

With a shiver, she adjusted the vents so they blew away from her, then folded her arms across her chest. Feeling incredibly awkward, she locked her gaze on the road ahead and said, “I take it you’re still a cop.”

The silence that met her remark was oppressive. So this was what she had to look forward to for the next two days. Not a problem. She was experienced at being ignored by him—when she’d been shot, when she’d lain alone in the hospital, when she’d been harassed and threatened every single day until finally her tormentors had run her out of town. She could handle a couple of days of not being spoken to.

But as soon as she’d completed the thought, he did speak, in a voice as scornful and unforgiving as any she’d ever heard. “What did Jace tell you?”

“Nothing.” It was an adequate answer that needed no elaboration, but that didn’t stop her from adding it. “If he’d mentioned your name, I wouldn’t have come.”

“If he’d mentioned your name, I wouldn’t have let you.”

Fine. So they were agreed that neither wanted to spend even a moment together. The only problem was that the potential cost to him was merely a few days’ discomfort, while the cost she paid might well be her life.

She returned to staring at the scenery. Jace had refused to tell her where she was going, presumably so he could hide who she was going with. All he’d said was that it was a quiet place where she would be safe.

Safe. With the one person who hated her most providing her only security. Gee, why didn’t she feel safe?

Last night had been far from restful. She tried to doze along the way, but every time she was close to actually falling asleep, something brought her fully alert—some bump in the road, a honk from a passing vehicle, some little bit of fear deep inside her. She gave up her effort as they approached a sign that read Welcome to Heartbreak—Reese’s hometown and, no doubt, their destination.

She smiled thinly. It seemed appropriate that she should wind up in a place whose name described her life so perfectly.

The real, physical Heartbreak didn’t seem a much better place to spend her time than the intangible, emotional heartbreak where she’d spent much of her life. The businesses were on the shabby side, the houses nothing special, the town dusty and worn. They passed one grocery store, two gas stations and three restaurants, one hardware store, one five-and-dime, and a handful of other businesses before Reese turned off the main street into a tree-lined neighborhood.

Maybe the houses weren’t big or fancy, she amended, but some of them, at least, had a certain charm. The trees in these yards were decades old, unlike her own neighborhood where every house had the same variety of very young saplings planted in the same location in the identical handkerchief-size yards. Additionally, there was nothing cookie-cutter about the houses—no identical plans for every fourth or fifth house, no homeowners association decreeing what to plant, when to mow and what colors to paint. There was a sidewalk on either side of the street for skating and playing jacks, front porches attached to every house for watching life pass by and mailboxes ranging from the purely functional to the eccentric to the just plain silly.

They were more like homes than her house could ever be.

After a half dozen blocks, the street ended in a driveway that ran long and straight through a stand of trees to a house some distance back. There were pastures on all four sides, a large yard in need of mowing and a barn out back that looked about a hundred years old with what must surely be its original paint. In contrast, the house gave every appearance of being brand-new. Its log walls, sandstone foundation and brick-red tin roof hadn’t even collected a thorough coating of Oklahoma dust yet.

The garage was on the north end of the house. Reese pulled inside next to a black-and-white Blazer that said Sheriff on the driver’s door beneath the department seal. Was that a general proclamation that all the sheriff’s department vehicles carried, or did it signify that this particular truck belonged to the sheriff? Neely wondered, but she wasn’t about to ask. He’d made it uncomfortably clear that he had no desire to talk to her, and she intended to make it easy for him to ignore her.

The door from the garage opened into a utility room. Straight ahead was the kitchen, and down a short hall to the right was a bedroom. She followed him through the kitchen and dining room and along another short hall to a bedroom diagonally opposite the first.

“You can use this room,” he said brusquely. “Bathroom’s next door.” Then he pivoted and returned the way they’d come.

Neely hesitantly entered the room and set her suitcase on the bed. To say the room was decorated would be overly generous. There were no pictures on the walls, no knickknacks scattered across the furniture, no pretty pillows piled on the bed. At best, it was functional. The walls were pale green, the trim white, the carpet a serviceable hunter-green. There were only blinds, no curtains, at the windows. The furniture was antique oak—a bed, dresser, two night tables and an armoire, probably handed down through generations of the Barnett family.

The only antiques she had were handed down, too—just not from her own family. She doubted that a Madison had existed before her and her sisters who could afford or appreciate such treasures.

She didn’t bother unpacking—why, when she would be leaving the next day?—but went to the bathroom next door, then headed back to the kitchen. She’d had only a doughnut and coffee for breakfast and had missed lunch completely. Though it wasn’t long until dinnertime, she needed something to settle the queasiness in her stomach or she would have one more woe to add to her long list.

Reese was already in the kitchen, washing up at the sink. She stopped abruptly and considered sneaking back to the bedroom, then rejected the idea. She wasn’t going to behave like a prisoner. She’d been willing to go back to Kansas City, or to strike out on her own, but no, they’d brought her here. If Reese hated having her there so much, he could damn well stay in the bedroom and go hungry himself.

Sparing her only the briefest of glances, he dried his hands, then took sandwich makings from the refrigerator. While she washed her own hands, he sliced a tomato, removed bread and chips from one cabinet, plates from another. He made his sandwich, emptied a ton of chips on the plate, then carried both the plate and a cold beer from the refrigerator to the corner table.

Neely made her own sandwich, filled a glass with water from the tap and settled for eating at the counter and staring at the horses in the pasture out back. When she was a kid, she’d wished every night for a horse to talk to, feed treats and ride a time or two. When she’d met Reese, she’d often wished for the chance to see where he’d come from, where he’d been shaped into the man he’d become, and at odd moments in the past nine years, she’d wished desperately, hopelessly, to see him just one more time.

Funny how wishes could come true in ways you most certainly didn’t wish for.

From across the room came the sound of a glass bottle tapping against wood, followed by a hostile question. “What did you do to piss off this guy who’s supposedly trying to kill you?”

Supposedly. Her smile was bitter. Last night someone had fired fifty shots or more into the bedroom where she was sleeping, but Reese had no problem turning the incident into an allegation that might not have even happened. What kind of proof did he need before he could believe her? Seeing her get shot, falling to the ground, bleeding and in great pain? No, wait. Been there, done that…and he’d still walked away. Maybe if she died this time, he would believe her. Maybe then he could forgive her.

Her appetite gone, she dropped the rest of her sandwich onto the plate, then turned to face him. “I did my job,” she said coolly. “A lot of people out there have a problem with attorneys who do what they’re tasked to do under the law.”

“And a lot of people have a problem with attorneys who use the law to let murderers, thieves and other criminals go free.”

It was an old argument, one they’d had a hundred times, one that he’d refused to see from any viewpoint but his own. She wasn’t going to be drawn into it again.

Pushing away from the counter, she walked to the broad doorway that led directly into the living room. It was more rustic than the other rooms, with log-and-stone walls, a big fireplace, wood plank floors and leather furniture. Rough cedar beams laid on the diagonal covered the peaked ceiling, and another beam served as mantel above the fireplace, supporting a collection of pottery. An entertainment system filled the corner on one side of the fireplace, and a computer and desk occupied the other. Great—TV, movies and Internet access. What more did she need?

“Nice house.” Her glance in his direction was too brief to bring him into focus, but just enough to confirm that he was still there. “Small-town life suits you.”

She could actually feel the sharpening of his glare as her mildly offered barb struck home. Small towns, small minds, he used to say about Thomasville. He’d gone there from Kansas City for the same reason she had—to make a start. Influenced by Jace, he’d been looking for an entrée into the law enforcement community. He’d planned to stay a year or two, get some experience, then start moving up into positions of more authority in larger departments.

She’d been fresh from passing the bar and had wanted a place where she could carefully build her practice. She’d had dreams back then of making a name for herself as a defender of the downtrodden, as the woman who would make good on that pledge she’d said every day through thirteen years of public school—and justice for all. Especially for the poor, the minorities, the people without a voice who couldn’t afford hot-shot lawyers to protect them. She’d intended to be one of those rare hot-shot lawyers, with a price that was within everyone’s reach.

She’d failed miserably. Apparently so had he.

She went into the living room, to the leather chair-and-a-half that was obviously Reese’s favorite seat. The remote control and the TV schedule were on the side table, and the shade of the lamp there was tilted slightly to provide better light for reading. After kicking off her shoes, she sat and folded her legs on the seat beside her, turned on the television, then realized with a grimace that she still wore her flower-bedecked straw hat. She pulled it off and tossed it on the matching ottoman, then concentrated on finding something to watch on TV.

Reese came to an abrupt stop just through the doorway when she removed the hat to reveal her hair—or what was left of it. Nine years ago it had reached past her waist. For court she’d worn it in a prim-and-proper bun at her nape. One of his greatest pleasures had been removing every one of the pins that had held it in place, letting the cool silky strands fall over his hands, over her body, then kissing those strands back into some bit of order.

He doubted there was a single hair on her head longer than a few inches now.

Forcing himself to move naturally, he sat on the sofa. “Let’s get the rules straight. You can’t go outside. You can’t answer the phone. You can’t answer the door. If someone comes over, go to the guest room, close the door and stay there. If Jace doesn’t have a new place for you by tomorrow, you’re going to the Canyon County jail over in Buffalo Plains.”

Her gaze narrowed, and he felt a twinge of guilt. He wasn’t in the habit of locking up crime victims, but these were special circumstances that required extraordinary measures. Besides, as jails went, Canyon County’s wasn’t bad. It was located in the basement of the county courthouse, which was about eighty years old, solidly built of sandstone and just about the safest place in town in tornado season. She would likely be the only woman in the section designated for female inmates, and she could have a few amenities such as TV and real food.

“I’ve taken the liberty of removing the phone from the kitchen so you won’t be tempted to call anyone, and the alarm system is set, so don’t try to sneak out. If you have any thoughts of using my computer, surfing the Internet or sending an e-mail to someone—” he followed her gaze to the computer, its monitor displaying a brightly colored screen saver of tropical fish “—just know that everything’s password-protected. You won’t get far.”

The chagrin that crossed her face left him with little doubt that using the computer had crossed her mind. Would she have been foolish enough to tell someone where she was—her sisters, her mother, whatever man she was seeing?

That last thought left him feeling decidedly annoyed—with her, with himself, with the mystery man. Of course there were men in her life. She was a beautiful woman with a healthy appreciation for sex and, as Jace had pointed out, it had been nine years. He’d had more than his share of women in those years, which was nobody’s business but his and theirs, and her affairs were none of his business. Not worth caring about, sure as hell not worth getting annoyed about.

“Any questions?”

She shook her head, and did little more than ruffle her bangs.

He gave himself a silent command to stand up and walk out of the room, to say nothing else, to put her out of his mind for the moment. He managed the standing-up part, but not the rest. The question just popped out on its own. “What the hell happened to your hair?”

She didn’t touch it self-consciously, which suggested that she’d worn it short a long time. She simply shrugged. “I went through a period a while back when I didn’t have much use of my right shoulder and arm. Taking care of long hair was a problem, so I chopped it off.”

Heat flooded his face and sent an edgy shudder down his spine. She was talking about the incident in Thomasville, when she’d gotten caught in the cross fire between an unstable client and a half dozen enraged deputies—the incident that had ended their relationship once and for all, that had haunted him for years afterward. He’d lost so much that day, and it was her fault. Yet she could talk about it so casually, as if it were no big deal. A woman had died, their affair had died—hell, sometimes he’d felt as if he were dying. But, hey, it was all in the past, over and done with.

She was waiting for him to say something, her fake-innocent brown gaze fixed on his face. He didn’t know what she wanted—an acknowledgment of what had happened? An inquiry into her recovery? An explanation? An apology? Whatever she wanted, he offered nothing. He simply circled the couch and returned to the kitchen…but not before catching a glimpse of the disappointment that darkened her eyes.

As if he cared, after all that had happened, if she was disappointed in him.

After putting the dishes in the dishwasher, he used the cell phone to check in with his office. It had been an average day—a few arrests, a couple of burglaries, enough traffic stops to pay the department salaries for the day. He told the undersheriff he wouldn’t be in the next day, brushed off the questions about why, and ended the call.

It was barely four o’clock and he felt like a prisoner in his own home. The sounds of a daytime talk show came from the living room, one he wouldn’t be caught dead watching. There was no cleaning to do, no groceries to buy, no laundry to wash. He’d been pretty damn industrious yesterday, which he wouldn’t have been had he known he would be stuck at home baby-sitting Neely today. Other than mowing, there was nothing to do, and he wasn’t sure he trusted her enough to leave her alone inside while he was outside.

Restlessly he gazed around the kitchen, then noticed the flashing light on the answering machine. He hit the playback button, then impatiently drummed his fingers on the counter until the first message started.

“Hi, Reese, it’s Shay. I just wanted to remind you about dinner tonight. The dispatcher said you’d taken the day off unexpectedly. You’d better not be planning to stand me up, and if you do, you’d better have a real good excuse. See you.”

He muttered a curse. He’d completely forgotten the invitation to have dinner with Shay Rafferty and her husband Easy tonight. They would be more than happy for him to bring Neely along, and she would be as safe at their place out in the country as she was here, but Shay knew him too well. She would want explanations he wasn’t about to make, and when she couldn’t get them from him, she would charm them out of Neely.

The next message was short and to the point—“Hi, Reese, it’s Ginger. Call me sometime.”—and the third was delivered in a hot sultry voice. “Hey, cowboy, I certainly enjoyed my riding lesson the other night. I figure this soreness will be gone in another day or two, so when can we saddle up for another go-round? Give me a call. You’ve got my number.”

A snort drew his attention to the doorway, where Neely was leaning against the jamb. With her feet bare and the denim dress that exposed her arms and throat and reached almost to her ankles, she looked very country, very natural and right, as if he’d designed the room with her in mind.

But he hadn’t. He may have given a thought or two to sharing this place with a woman someday—he didn’t intend to stay single forever—but that dream woman had been faceless, nameless. She certainly hadn’t been Neely Madison, whom he considered much more a nightmare than a dream.

When he turned his back on her, she padded across the cool stone floor to the sink to refill her water glass, he guessed from the sounds of it. He erased the messages, then called Shay at the Heartbreak Café. As soon as he said hello, she accusingly interrupted.

“You forgot, didn’t you?”

“Sort of. Something came up at work. I’m not going to be able to make it.”

“Oh, by all means, go on,” Neely remarked on her way back into the living room. “I don’t mind staying here alone.”

Reese scowled at her back as a note of interest came into Shay’s voice. “You have company—female company. Reese Barnett, are you seeing some woman that none of us knows about?”

“No. I told you, it’s work.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve never known you to take your work home with you. Is she a new deputy? A suspect? A suspect’s lawyer?”

“Look, I really can’t talk, Shay. I’m sorry about tonight.”

“Not as sorry as you’re about to become. Easy’s buyer from Fort Worth is joining us for dinner.”

She was right. He was sorrier now. Shay’s husband was a rodeo champ turned horse trainer who boasted the best paints in Oklahoma. Victoria Morales, his Fort Worth buyer, was a regular customer, beautiful as an angel, rich as sin and as down-to-earth natural as any woman Reese had ever known. He’d met her a time or two before and liked her—a lot. “Tell her I’m sorry I missed her.”

“This work you can’t talk about…is she as pretty as Victoria?”

Though it was totally unnecessary, he couldn’t stop his gaze from going to Neely, settled once again in his chair. She was beautiful, too, much as he wished he could deny it. But so much had gone wrong between them that couldn’t be set right. He couldn’t imagine ever getting beyond the past or reaching for a future, not with her.

Even though, for a long time, a future with Neely had been all he’d ever wanted. Love. Marriage. Kids. Till-death-do-us-part.

Death had parted them, all right. Just not in the way he’d expected.

“I’ve got to go, Shay,” he said abruptly. “Give my best to Easy and Victoria. We’ll try again some other time.”

Chapter 2

Neely stood at the living-room window, staring off to the west as the setting sun turned the sky pink, lavender, blue, and every shade imaginable in between. When the darkness began to gradually seep over the colors, she was tempted for one whimsical moment to applaud and call out, “Good job!” and “Do it again!” Of course, she did nothing of the sort. She smiled, though—to herself, for herself—and wished she could grab hold tight of this fleeting serenity and wrap it around her for a little longer. She had so few truly peaceful moments in her life that they’d become dear.

“Get away from the window. Someone might see you.”

She didn’t argue with the curt command—didn’t point out that she stood in a darkened room on a dusky evening, or that the blackjack oaks that grew thick as weeds between the street and the yard made it impossible to see that there was even a house back here. She simply moved away from the window and toward Reese.

She’d offered her help with dinner and he’d turned her down. She’d said she would set the table and he’d told her to go away. Now she stood in the doorway of the brightly lit kitchen, hands clasped behind her back, and watched as he dished up steaks and baked sweet potatoes. If she could be reasonably certain that he wouldn’t snarl or snap at her, she would make some lighthearted comment about how she liked having a man cook for her. But he would snarl or snap, and she wasn’t up to it tonight.

And so she said nothing as he carried the plates to the table, then the glasses and a pitcher of tea, or as he gestured for her to take a seat. She didn’t compliment him on the flavorful steak, grilled to just the right degree of doneness, and she certainly didn’t speculate on how he’d remembered after all these years that she liked her beef medium-rare.

Halfway through the meal, she paused to refill her glass, then evenly asked, “Is there anything at all we can talk about that won’t make you angry?”

He pretended to think about it for a moment, rubbing his jaw with one long, slender finger, then shrugged. “Not that I can think of.”

The wise course would be to accept his answer, finish the meal in silence, and return to the living room, where the television would talk at her if not to her. Naturally she didn’t go that route. “Aw, come on, Reese. You always prided yourself on being able to talk to anybody about anything, no matter how much you detested them.”

“That was before I knew just how much I was capable of detesting someone.”

She didn’t wince, didn’t give any indication that he’d scored a hit. She kept her expression bland, her voice level and empty of emotion. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what I’ve done the last nine years, how many people I’ve screwed and how many lives I’ve destroyed?”

She’d certainly screwed up her own life, and it wasn’t fair. All she’d ever wanted was to be a good lawyer and to help people. She’d dedicated most of her thirty-five years to achieving those goals, and what had she accomplished? The only man she’d ever loved despised her. He’d taught her to despise herself. Her noble career was a joke. Judy Miller was dead, and if Eddie Forbes had his way, she would soon be dead herself.

“I am curious about one thing.” Reese laid the steak knife aside as if he didn’t trust himself to talk to her with it in hand.

“How did you sucker Jace into believing that your life was worth saving?”

A faint tremor passed through her, making her pull her hands into her lap before he noticed. She summoned her best smile, her most casual shrug and her most intimate voice, and replied with her own question. “How do you think?”

Neely knew exactly what he thought, without needing to see the suspicion enter his gaze, or the tension that set his jaw and knotted his fingers. Keeping the smile in place through sheer will, she laid her napkin on the table and rose as gracefully as she could. “Dinner was wonderful. Hope you don’t mind if I leave the cleanup to you.” Still smiling, she left the room.

Her bedroom was dark once she closed the door, but she didn’t need light to make it to the bed. She sat on the mattress and let the smile slip as a great shudder rocketed through her. She had never thought she would see the day when she would anticipate taking up residence in a jail cell, but as far as she was concerned, tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. Anything would be better than staying here one moment longer than necessary.

Well, anything besides a middle-of-the-night-wake-up call with fully automatic assault weapons.

She didn’t know how long she sat there—long enough for the sounds of cleaning in the kitchen to stop, long enough to make her flinch when she turned on the bedside lamp—before she finally stood up. She removed a toiletries case and night-clothes from her suitcase, eased the door open enough to see that the lights were off in the kitchen and on in the living room, then padded next door to the bathroom.

Like the guest room, it was functional—all the necessary appointments, clean lines, nothing unusual or remarkable. Everything was white—counter, floor, walls, the plumbing and light fixtures, even the towel rods and the towels they held. The only spot of color in the room was her. She didn’t know whether she loved the pure starkness of it all or hated it. Not that her opinion mattered one bit to Reese.

After showering, she wrapped one white towel around her body, another around her head. By the time she’d brushed and flossed her teeth, dried her hair, smoothed three different moisturizers over their appropriate body parts, added a dusting of powder and put on her T-shirt and shorts, the pristine bathroom looked well-used. Though she was tempted to leave it that way, she repacked everything and left the room almost as spotless as she’d found it. She couldn’t do anything about her scents that lingered, but they would be gone before Reese ever noticed them.

Kind of like her.

Suddenly weary, Neely returned to the bedroom, put the toiletries back in the suitcase and folded her dirty clothes on top of it, then stretched out on top of the covers. She felt more alone in that instant than she’d ever felt before. Even her toughest times—when her father had been taken away in handcuffs, when Reese had left her bleeding on the courthouse steps, when she’d lain in the hospital praying that he would come to see her, when she’d driven away from Thomasville and known she would never return—hadn’t felt quite like this. If she were a weaker woman, she would cry, but she’d learned well that crying resolved nothing. It hadn’t brought her father back, or Reese. It hadn’t made her feel any less betrayed or helped her deal with her disappointments.

She’d had so many disappointments, and had caused so many more.

When this was over—if she survived—she needed a new life and a new job in a new place. She would forget about making a difference, about helping people or being important to someone, and she would concentrate on keeping to herself, not getting involved, not doing any harm or destroying any lives. She could work as a waitress or get some dreary office-drone job where she would spend her days alone in a cubicle, having little contact with the outside world and zero chances to screw up.

As she turned onto her side to face the window, she smiled faintly. She didn’t indulge in self-pity often, but when she did, she did it well. Anyone watching her now would think her life had gone to hell in a handbasket, when the truth was, she still had a lot. No one could take away her law degree and ten years of hard-learned experience. Her bank accounts were healthy beyond her greediest dreams. She owned a beautiful house that would bring a small fortune in Kansas City’s current market. She was alive and well, at least for the time being, and might actually manage to stay that way. She had a lot to live for.

Just not the sort of things she’d always imagined herself having by now. No family, but sisters with problems of their own and a mother who’d never been more than ineffectual. A house, but no home. Acquaintances, but no friends. Occasional sex partners, but no lovers.

No Reese.

She smiled again, but this time there was no self-mocking in it. Just enduring regret that she feared would never go away.

Waiting for sleep to overtake her, she stared out the window until her eyes grew gritty, until simple tiredness passed into fatigue. She watched the already-dark sky turn even blacker as a storm crept in, taking its sweet time in reaching Heartbreak. Lightning appeared first, far off on the horizon, then before long, distant thunder rumbled through the night—low, deep, unsettling. It seemed to vibrate through the cabin’s thick log walls, through the wooden planks of the floor and the old oak bed, and right on through her body—long, relentless grumbles. She tossed restlessly, then gave up and went to the nearest window.

She loved thunderstorms—loved their primal edge, their cathartic fury. They were less impressive back home, where the lightning had to compete with millions of city lights, where the thunder was often just one more grumble in a clamor of city noise. But here there was only one man-made light—a flood lamp outside the barn—and the thunder was challenged only by the wind and the approaching rain. If she were free to do whatever she wanted, she would go outside on the front porch, curl up in one of the rockers and breathe deeply of the clean, sweet air. She would let the wind blow her hair and clothes every which way and when the driving rain arrived, she would let it drench her to the skin, and maybe, once the storm had passed, she would have been washed just a little bit cleaner.

But she wasn’t free, and the way her luck was running, the first bolt of lightning that struck would be drawn unerringly to her soaked, superconductor body. Then everyone’s problems would be solved—Eddie Forbes’s, Jace’s, Reese’s and her own.

The flood lamp out back flickered, went off, came on and went off again as the power inside the house surged and ebbed. Next door the refrigerator cycled on and off, as did the central air, before finally shutting down in a silence that seemed eerie compared to the activity outside.

Now she could go outside. Without power, the security alarm would be worthless—unless Reese had installed some sort of backup power source, which he probably had. Besides, if she managed to get out without setting off the alarm, the electricity would surely come back on while she was outside and she would trigger it coming back in and, believing she was an intruder, Reese would blow her away—or, at least, that would be his story. And who would dispute him? Worse, who would care?

But staying inside didn’t mean having to stay in her room, standing at one small window. Neely opened her door, listened, then carefully felt her way through the darkness to the living room. Flashes of lightning led her to a chair in front of the ten-foot-long window, where she curled up, head resting on one fist, and watched the show outside.

She’d been there five minutes, maybe less, when the power started flickering again. Sounding like the little engine that couldn’t, the computer tried to boot up, shut down, then tried again. Finding her way by lightning and touch, she knelt under the desk to turn off the power strip and unplug it from the wall. She’d lost a computer once from just such activity, and though she was sure Reese wouldn’t show the least bit of gratitude, she saw no reason to sit idly by while it happened to him.

She was resettled in the chair, watching as a curtain of rain moved through the blackjacks and across the yard, listening to its great thundering rush, when a thud sounded nearby, followed by a grunt of pain and a curse. She watched as a shadowy form pushed aside the wooden desk chair she’d pulled from its usual spot, then knelt in front of the desk—waited until he was half under, then quietly said, “I’ve already unplugged the computer.”

The next thud was louder—the back of Reese’s head connecting with the underside of the desk’s center drawer—and the next curse was harsher. She didn’t spare him any sympathy—he was hardheaded enough—but turned her attention back to the storm. The rain was pounding the metal roof now in a staccato rhythm that would wake the soundest sleeper…or perhaps lull the lightest off to sleep.

She was right about the gratitude. He sat in the chair that matched hers and fixed a weighty gaze on her that she couldn’t see but could certainly feel. “What the hell are you doing up?”

“Am I restricted to my room at night? If so, you should have made that clear. Or maybe it would be best if you’d just reset the doorknob to the guest room so that it locks from the outside.”

Lightning lit the night sky and the room, giving her an all-too-clear look at him. He wore a pair of jeans and nothing else, and he looked incredible. Broad-shouldered, muscular, smooth tanned skin, narrow waist, ridged belly, lean hips…In sudden need of a cool splash of water, she directed her gaze outside again.

“It’s three in the morning.” His voice was sullen, but surprisingly pleasant—low, deep, masculine—in spite of it. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Why aren’t you?” She wasn’t about to admit that she couldn’t sleep because she was feeling sorry for herself, because she found being thrown together with him again so unsettling. No way was she going to speculate that subconsciously she was afraid to sleep, because the last time she’d done it, someone had tried to kill her. Show him any sign of weakness and, just like other predators, he would use it against her.

“Do you always answer questions with questions?”

“No. Sometimes I don’t answer them at all. On rare occasions, I actually answer with the truth. But not if I can avoid it.”

A particularly loud clap of thunder rattled the windowpanes. In the relative quiet that followed, Reese asked, “What happened last night?”

“Last night?”

Impatience tightened his voice. “Jace said someone tried to kill you. What happened?”

Jace said… His best friend—family—had told him, and yet he sounded as if he wasn’t at all convinced that she was truly in danger. What did he think—that she and Jace had concocted this plan to get the two of them together again? That she’d pined for him for nine years and was now making a desperate attempt to win him back?

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. Ginger.” 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.

At the steps, she grabbed hold of the railing and planted her feet. “I’m not your prisoner!”

“You’re in my custody. What do you think that means?”

“I don’t want to stay here!”

“Tough. Now I’d advise you to let go of the rail or risk taking a fistful of splinters with you.”

At first she held on tighter, looking as if she’d like to sink her manicured nails into his hide, but after a moment she grudgingly released the rail and, making an effort at regaining some dignity, sedately climbed the steps. At the top, though, she dug in her heels again. “Let go of me.”

“Once you’re locked up inside.”

Her eyes were dark with impotent anger and her lip was showing the slightest tremble as they stared at each other. There was no doubt he would get his way—he was bigger, stronger, and way too accustomed to being obeyed. The only question was whether she would enter the house under her own power or over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

There was no telling what the outcome would have been if they hadn’t been interrupted by the surge of a powerful engine accelerating down the driveway. As if she weighed less than nothing, he dragged her across the deck and over the threshold, then gave her a shove toward the guest room. “Get in the bedroom, close the door and stay quiet,” he ordered as he closed and locked the door.

There was a time to be obstructive and a time to obey without argument. As Neely watched Reese remove his pistol from the holster tucked at the small of his back, she had no doubt about which time this was. She beat a quick retreat into the guest room, nearly tripping over her suitcase. After locking the door, she leaned against it and gave the room a quick scan. As guest rooms went, for a man who probably shared his bed with most of his overnight guests, the room lacked nothing. As a safe place to hide from unexpected visitors, it lacked everything. There was no way she could fit in the few-inch clearance between the floor and the bed, no cover in the empty closet and, thanks to the shelves and drawers and her own long legs, no space large enough inside the oak armoire.

She was worrying for nothing, she counseled herself. The visitor was probably the mailman or a delivery man, bringing a package to leave on the porch. It might even be Jace, come to rescue her.

But what if it was cause for worry? What if somehow, some way, Eddie Forbes had tracked her down and he’d come to finish what he’d started? He was too big a coward to come alone, so his thugs would be with him. Would Reese be able to protect her?

Would he even try?

Without warning, the doorknob rattled. Neely clamped her hands over her mouth to muffle the startled gasp that slipped out and whirled away from the door, as if those few feet somehow offered more protection.

“Open the door, Neely.”

Even if she hadn’t recognized Reese’s voice, she would have known that scornful impatience anywhere. After taking a few deep breaths to ease her tremors, she twisted the lock, then hastily moved to the opposite side of the bed.

He opened the door but didn’t come farther than a step into the room. “That was one of my deputies. When the alarm’s set off, it automatically dials into the dispatcher. Since I didn’t answer the phone when the dispatcher called to clear it and Darren was in the area, he came by to check it out.” His gaze shifted from her to the neatly made bed, then to her suitcase. For some reason she couldn’t begin to guess at, he scowled. “I told him I forgot about the alarm. Thanks for making me look like an idiot.”

He never looked like an idiot, even when he was being one, so she didn’t feel too sorry for him. Back in Thomasville, they’d had some of the most ridiculous arguments, with him on the side of unreasonable, illogical, narrow-minded fools everywhere, but he’d managed to never look unreasonable, illogical or narrow-minded himself.

Though he’d eventually proven that he was all three.

Clasping her hands together tightly so they wouldn’t tremble, she tried to look braver and calmer than she felt. “I’d really like to go to the jail now.” Before he could turn her down flat again, she rushed on. “There’s no safe place to hide here. If Forbes finds out I’m here, it’s all over. I have no place to go.”

He looked at her for a long still moment, then made a decision he apparently didn’t like, followed by an impatient gesture. “Come on. I’ll show you the safe room.”

Chapter 3

Neely had heard of safe rooms—who in Tornado Alley hadn’t?—but she’d never actually seen one. In her own house, the hall bathroom was her best bet in the event of disaster—an interior room, no windows, only one door—but a best bet was far from an honest-to-God, built-for-that-purpose safe room.

She followed Reese through the kitchen and down the other side hallway into his bedroom. The room was large, comfortable, messier than any other room in the house, but that was all she had the chance to notice before he opened a door in the corner. From the bedroom side, anyone would think it was a closet, which some safe rooms were. But not this one. It was small—six-by-eight, maybe eight-by-eight feet. The walls were painted white, the floor carpeted in beige. Much of the space was taken up by a twin bed. There was an electric light overhead, two wall sconces that held candles and a shelf filled with flashlights, a radio, batteries, matches and bottled water.

“Come over here and close the door,” Reese commanded gruffly, and she returned from her examination of the room to do so. What had looked like a regular door from the other side was actually steel, she realized, and quite heavy. Fortunately, it didn’t require significant effort to move it—at least, not until it was closed and secured. There was what appeared to be a heavy-duty dead bolt lock, along with a steel bar that fitted through brackets on the inside of the door.

“The structure isn’t attached to the house, so the house can blow away without affecting this room at all. The walls and ceiling are reinforced concrete, more than a foot thick. This design has been proven to withstand winds up to three hundred miles per hour. It’s also bulletproof.”

A shiver danced down her spine, one she thought she controlled, but he noticed and frowned. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

“Oh, no. I’m learning to love small, enclosed, safe places.”

They stood there a moment, the silence around them thick and unnatural. When he broke it, Neely wasn’t prepared for the sound of his voice…or had she been anticipating it?

“Who is Forbes?”

A chill swept over her, and she rubbed her bare arms vigorously to generate some heat. After a halfhearted effort, she unfastened the two locks, pushed open the door and returned to the brighter, warmer environment of the bedroom. She thought about brushing him off, about flat-out lying that she didn’t know anyone by that name or not answering at all. But as long as she was around, whether in his house or his jail, her problems were his problems.

Threats against her now included him.

A large bay window with a seat looked out onto the front porch and the yard. She sat there, folded her arms across her middle and replied, “Eddie Forbes is a convicted felon whose business interests range from trafficking in narcotics to money-laundering to murder-for-hire.”

“Whose murder?”

“That of his primary rival in the drug trade. His wife’s lover.” She smiled tautly. “And mine.”

“Why yours? You give him bad legal advice?”

Though her smile didn’t waver, she felt a stab of hurt that he thought so little of her. She hadn’t busted her butt all those years to become a lawyer to defend people like Forbes—career criminals, amoral scum who took what they wanted, destroyed countless lives and bought, manipulated and threatened their way out of trouble. Yes, she had defended some guilty people, and yes, she’d gotten some of them off when the cops or the D.A.’s office had screwed up. But that was justice. Even criminals had rights that couldn’t be violated.

But justice was all she’d ever sought for any of her clients. She had never gone into court with the intention to free a client she knew was guilty. A fair trial. That was all she’d ever promised, all she’d ever delivered.

“No, I wasn’t his lawyer,” she replied carelessly. “That would have been a conflict of interest.”

“Why?”

“Because I was working for the D.A.’s office at the time. I was Eddie’s prosecutor. I sent him to prison.”

She saw the surprise that flashed through his eyes, followed by a hint of bitterness. Why don’t you put that expensive degree to good use? he’d asked her countless times back in Thomasville. Why don’t you go to work for the D.A., where you can do some real good?

She’d never wanted to be on that side of the courtroom. Overzealous, ambitious or uncaring prosecutors were responsible, in her opinion, for much of the injustice in the justice system. They sent innocent people to jail, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, but almost always without caring. But Judy Miller’s murder and Reese’s breaking her heart had convinced her that, just as in providing poor, uninformed clients with a chance for justice, there could be some noble purpose in providing that same justice to guilty people who so richly deserved to be in prison.

And so she’d gone to work for the Jackson County District Attorney’s office. She’d been as good a prosecutor as she was a defense attorney. She’d built an impressive record and been rewarded with a heavier caseload and more pressure to perform. She’d had less attention to pay to the details, had had to rely on other people’s information and opinions. Clearing her cases had become more important than justice.

The day she’d won a conviction against a man whom she honestly doubted was guilty, she’d turned in her resignation. In the years since she’d neither defended nor prosecuted anyone. She handled wills and trusts, product liability and medical malpractice, prenuptial agreements and divorces, custody cases and adoptions—a little bit of everything. She charged big fees of clients who could afford them and adjusted them accordingly for clients who couldn’t, made damn good money and didn’t care much about any of it.

“So you prosecuted this guy and got a conviction.”

She nodded. “He served five years on a fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence. He warned me at the sentencing that he wouldn’t forget me. He got out a few weeks ago, killed his wife, who’d divorced him while he was inside, then came looking for me.” Her smile was thin and bitter. “So…thanks for the great advice. At least when I was on the defense side of the table, none of my clients ever tried to kill me.”

“No, they killed innocent people instead.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but what good would it do? He’d refused to see reason nine years ago, and he appeared even more rigid now. A decade of blaming her seemed to have set his opinions in stone.

When she didn’t respond, he walked out of the room, his boots echoing on the wood floors. She didn’t follow him, but sank back against the window. She was suddenly tired—of being alone, being afraid, being sorry. Of trying so hard and failing so miserably. Of being damned for doing her job, for obeying the law, for other people’s mistakes. She wished she could run far away and never come back, but at the moment she’d be lucky to get within ten feet of a door.

Since that was out, she wished she could curl up in bed, pull the covers close around her and sleep deeply, peacefully, without dreams, until all this ugliness was done. There was a bed six feet in front of her, the navy-blue covers turned down on this side, the fat pillow with an indentation ready to cradle her head. She could kick off her shoes, leave her clothes in a pile on the floor and sink down into all that softness, with nothing showing but the top of her head. The sheets would smell of Reese, and the covers would create a warm, dark cocoon, and she would feel safe because Reese’s bed had always been a wonderful place to be.

Had been. Until nine years ago. Wasn’t anymore and never would be again.

Wearily she got to her feet, intending to return to the guest room and go quietly insane. She stopped beside the bed for a moment, picked up his pillow and lifted it to her face. It did smell of him, of the same cologne he’d favored years earlier, of the scent that was simply him, of the time when she had smelled of him. She breathed deeply, bringing back sweet memories of sweeter times, then, with a lump in her throat, hugged the pillow tightly to her chest.

When she finally walked away, it wasn’t out of the bedroom, but into the safe room. She left the door open barely an inch, allowing a bit of weak light into the darkness, then sat on the bed and breathed deeply. There was nothing wrong with feeling melancholy as long as she didn’t cry, and she wasn’t going to do that. Crying served no purpose. It solved nothing and merely provided others with proof of her weakness. It didn’t even make her feel better—her eyes got puffy and red, her head ached and she had trouble breathing—so she absolutely was not going to do it.

And then she lay down, snuggled close to Reese’s pillow and cried.

Lunchtime came and went with no sign of Neely. Reese had spent the rest of the morning thinking about what she’d said, trying to imagine her working as an assistant D.A., wondering why she’d gone that route when her heart had always been set on defending crooks, not prosecuting them. Was it the Miller case that had pushed her to the other side? Had getting shot opened her eyes to the fact that there was more to justice than simple fairness?

He’d always thought her insistence that justice equaled fairness was naive. What was just about a man who’d beaten his wife half to death on numerous occasions going free because he hadn’t been read his rights—rights he already knew by heart from the five other times he’d been arrested? Where was the justice in dropping charges against a drug dealer because the officers had lacked probable cause for searching his car? When their search had been justified, when drugs and money, both in great quantities, had been found, what did probable cause matter?

Why did acknowledged criminals even have any rights?

When his stomach started grumbling, he put a frozen casserole in the microwave oven, set the timer, then glanced at the wall that separated the guest room from the kitchen. What was she doing in there that kept her so quiet? Reading? Sleeping? Looking outside where she couldn’t go and heaping silent curses on his head? He told himself it wasn’t important. All that mattered was that she was keeping her distance from him. That was the only way they were going to get through the rest of the day. But when he kept wondering, he finally walked down the hall to check.

It was so quiet in the guest room because she wasn’t there. He checked the bathroom—the door was open, the lights off—then his bedroom. It was empty, too. She couldn’t possibly have left the house. The first thing he’d done after sending the deputy on his way was reset the alarm. Even if she’d managed to sneak out without his knowing it, the dispatcher would have called.

He made a quick check of the entire house, including the garage, then ended up once again in his own room. He was about to turn away and resort to searching closets when the door to the safe room caught his attention. Normally he kept it closed, but when he’d left Neely earlier, it had been wide open. Now it was only slightly ajar.

He pushed the door open and reached for the light switch, then abruptly stopped. She was lying on her side on the bed, her knees drawn up, her sherbet-green skirt covering her legs and feet, and she was asleep.

The first sensation that swept over him was relief. He might resent her like hell, might wish she’d disappear from his life and his memory, but he didn’t want her dead, hurt or in danger. Whatever wrongs she’d committed, whatever mistakes she’d made, she didn’t deserve to die for them. She certainly didn’t deserve to die for sending a drug dealer and murderer to prison.

The second sensation was…hard to identify. Something weak. Soft. Damnably foolish. For the first time he noticed the signs of unrelenting stress—the shadows under her eyes, the tension that wrinkled her forehead even in sleep, her fists clutching his pillow to her chest. She looked so fragile. Vulnerable. Pushed to the limits of her endurance and beyond. There was a part of him—the part that remembered loving her—that wanted to close the door and lock them inside this safe place, then gather her into his arms and simply hold her. That part knew instinctively that as long as he held her, she would sleep without dreams, without fear, until the fatigue was banished and she was rested enough to rely on her own strength.

Thank God the rest of him knew better than to give in to such weakness.

Minute after minute passed, and he simply stood there and looked at her. Nothing broke the silence but breathing—hers slow and even, his ragged and less than steady. Nothing existed but the two of them, no place but this room.

The timer beeping in the kitchen finally spurred him to move. He left the safe room, then, on impulse, returned with a chenille throw. Careful not to touch her, he spread it over her, pulled the door nearly shut and went back to the kitchen.

After lunch, he spent the next few hours on the Internet, searching for whatever he could find on Eddie Forbes. By the time he read the last archived newspaper article, he felt pretty damn grim. A lot of criminals accepted the risk of arrest and prison as part of the cost of doing business and bore no ill will toward either the cops or the D.A. Everybody—good guy or bad—was just doing his job.

Eddie Forbes wasn’t one of them. He blamed his unfortunate incarceration on everyone but himself. He’d already killed his ex-wife and her lover and threatened to kill Neely next. Because he blamed them most? Or because they were women and more vulnerable than the cops, crooks and lawyers involved?

Reese had just signed off the computer and risen from his chair when the cell phone rang. He sat back down and answered, fully expecting to hear his cousin’s voice. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Hey, bubba. How’s it going?”

Thinking about Neely’s escape that morning and his dragging her back into the house, Reese ignored the heat rising up his neck and carelessly replied, “Everything’s okay here. How about there?”

“Everybody’s stirred up. Seems somebody disappeared from the department’s protective custody and no one has a clue where she’s gone.”

“That’s what you get for working in a big city. We couldn’t lose a prisoner down here if we wanted to.” Unless she just got up and walked out. If she had closed the door quietly instead of giving in to her temper and slamming it, who knew how far she could have gotten?

“Did you ever start locking the jail cells, or couldn’t you find the key?”

“Funny, Jace. When are we going to see you again?”

There was a guilty silence, followed by a slow, “I don’t know. I thought I was going to be able to get away sometime soon, but it didn’t work out. There’s too much going on here. I’m stuck.”

Reese scowled. Jace had lied to him, conned him into taking Neely and accepted his deadline for getting her out by tonight, and now he was backing out of the deal, just like that. As if no one else had a say in the matter. And, really, how much say did they have? She was here. She had no place else to go, and he had only one place to take her—one place she certainly didn’t belong. They were stuck, not Jace. “For how long?” he asked stiffly.

“I don’t know, bubba.”

“Listen, bubba—”

“Hey, I tried. There’s just no way I can get away right now.” After a pause, Jace’s tone lightened. “But it’s nice to know you miss me so much.”

“Yeah, like a pain in the—” Reese broke off as Neely, looking very much like a small child awakened too soon from a nap, came into the room. “Hey, your mom says you never call.”

“I call her every week.”

“Yeah, well, call her twice this week.” That would make Aunt Rozena happy, and all Barnetts had a stake in keeping Rozena happy. “You know, you owe me more favors than you’ll ever be able to repay.”

“I know, bubba. Thanks. And, hey, tell her… Tell her not to worry.”

Reese glanced at Neely, standing in front of the fireplace and looking at the family photos there, and wondered yet again what was between her and Jace. It had better not be anything more than friendship, because if his cousin thought for one minute he was going to marry her, make her part of the family and subject Reese to her presence for the rest of their lives, he was crazy.

But Neely had been known to make men crazy before.

She’d sure as hell made him crazy.

“I will,” he said quietly. “Keep in touch, will you?”

“When I can.”

Reese hung up and laid the phone aside, then swiveled around to watch her. He could tell the instant she became aware of his gaze. She stood an inch taller. Became less soft. Tried to look tougher—and failed.

“Was that Jace?” She sounded as cool and unapproachable as she tried to look, and never shifted her gaze one millimeter from the photograph in front of her.

“Yeah.”

“He’s not coming, is he?”

“No.”

If he hadn’t been studying her, he would have missed the nearly imperceptible shiver that rippled through her. “Then we may as well go. My bag is already packed.”

If he took her to the jail, as he’d threatened, her presence in Canyon County would no longer be his and Jace’s secret. She would be out of his house but not out of his life. He might be more comfortable—though he wouldn’t bet on it—but she would be trading one difficult situation for another. She very well might be no safer there than she was here—maybe not even as safe. Everyone in the department and a good number of courthouse employees would know she was there, and who knew who they might tell?

No, transferring her to the jail wasn’t the answer—not yet, at least. He would give his cousin a little more time, then reconsider, but he wasn’t taking her anywhere today. “Jace said to tell you not to worry.”

The faintest of smiles touched her mouth before disappearing. “Jace is an optimist.”

“So are you.”

She shook her head. “Maybe I used to be, but not anymore. These days I’m a realist.”

And these days her reality wasn’t too encouraging.

“You hungry? There’s a casserole in the refrigerator—one of my aunt’s Tex-Mex specialties.” Reese went into the kitchen, and she followed, taking a plate from the cabinet to dish up a helping to put in the microwave.

“Smells wonderful,” she said, breathing deeply. “How is Rozena?”

Pausing in the act of returning the casserole container to the refrigerator, Reese looked at her sharply. When they were together, she’d never met any of his family but his father and Jace. He couldn’t remember ever mentioning his aunt by name, or believe Neely would remember after all these years. “You know Rozena?”

The suspicion in his voice stiffened her spine as she watched the food slowly rotate inside the oven. “We met the last time she visited Jace in Kansas City.”

He didn’t know Rozena had visited Jace in the city. And why in hell would Jace include Neely in a family visit unless… “You think he’s going to marry you?”

Either the question itself or the hostility that made it so harsh startled her into looking at him. Her brown eyes were open wide and faintly amused, and her mouth wore the beginning of a smile that never quite formed. Instead she grew serious and thoughtful. “Does that worry you?”

“Jace deserves better.”

“But we don’t always get what we deserve, do we?”

And what did she think he deserved? Eternal damnation?

“The family will never accept you.”

“Why not? Because you’ll tell them whatever is necessary to make them dislike me?”

“All that will be necessary is the truth.”

The microwave stopped, and she removed her plate, carried it to the table, then returned for a Coke and silverware. As she settled in the chair she calmly said, “You can’t tell them the truth, Reese, because you don’t know it. All you know—all you can accept—is your narrow-minded version of what happened, but there’s so much more to it than that.”

“There’s nothing more to it,” he argued, moving to sit across from her. “Leon Miller tried to kill his wife. We arrested him and took him to trial. You manipulated the law to get the charges dropped, and he walked out of the courthouse and blew her away. Bottom line—if not for you, he wouldn’t have gone free that day. If not for you, Judy wouldn’t have died that day.” He stared at her a long, cold moment before finally finishing. “The bottom line is you were responsible, Neely. You should have paid the price.”

Neely held her fork so tightly that the beveled stainless edges cut into her palm, but she kept her hand from shaking and thought she succeeded fairly well at keeping the hurt and frustration out of her expression. In fact, even to herself, she sounded polite. Conversational. “It must be nice to be able to pass judgment on the rest of the world—to lay blame wherever you want, to condemn whoever you want and absolve whoever you choose. You decide which laws are worth enforcing and which to ignore in the name of right. You point fingers, lay blame, assign guilt, judge, condemn and sentence, all from your intolerant, mean little viewpoint, and all with the certainty that you have a God-given right to do so.

“Well, you don’t, Reese. You’re no wiser than anyone else. You overstep your authority, and you do incredible harm. You accuse me of manipulating the law. How could you possibly tell after you and others like you have twisted and subverted it beyond recognition? In your quest for justice as you define it, you trample all over people’s civil rights, and then when your case gets thrown out, you look for someone else to blame. You don’t have the guts to say, ‘I shouldn’t have conducted an illegal search, or beaten a confession out of the suspect, or failed to read him his rights. I screwed up.’ Oh, no, you say, ‘It’s his lawyer’s fault. It’s the judge’s fault. The D.A. wasn’t prepared. It was that bleeding-heart jury.’”

She took a breath, forced her fingers to uncurl, and lay the fork on her plate. Folding her hands tightly in her lap, she met his gaze unflinchingly. “The bottom line, Reese, is that Leon Miller walked out of the courthouse a free man that day because your department screwed up. Your fellow deputies failed to read him his rights and coerced his confession. From the first time they hit him, it was guaranteed that those charges were going to be dropped. It didn’t matter who his lawyer was or if he even had a lawyer. The judge had no choice but to dismiss the case. Your people set him free. Your people gave him another chance to kill his wife. Not me.”

His face was a few shades paler than normal, which heightened the color staining his cheeks, and his eyes were a few shades darker. He wanted to argue with her—she knew that from too much experience arguing just such cases in the past—but he didn’t seem able to get the words out. They would just be a waste of breath, just as all her words had been wasted.

He believed, as the rest of the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department had, that, to some extent, the end justified the means. When Leon Miller had given his wife the worst beating yet, they’d shown him what it was like to be brutalized by someone bigger, stronger and angrier. They’d gotten a confession and some small satisfaction, and had left the D.A. with no case.

Thankfully, Reese hadn’t been involved in that particular case, though he’d arrested Miller a number of times before. He hadn’t approved of the beating, but he’d understood it, and he hadn’t thought it a reason to let the man go. Well, hell, Neely had understood it, too. What woman, victim or not, hadn’t fantasized at least once about some tough guy coming along and teaching a wife-beating bully a lesson he would never forget? And if it had merely been some tough guy, she probably would have cheered him on and volunteered to represent him if he was arrested.

But they’d been deputies. The so-called good guys.

And their crime had been worse than any Miller had committed until that day.

“It’s an old argument that we may as well drop now,” she said wearily. “I can’t accept your point of view, and you won’t consider mine.”

“And what is your point of view, Neely? That fairness should always win out over justice? That Miller’s civil rights were more important than Judy’s life? That you can’t be held responsible for what your client does once he walks out of the courtroom? Because that’s all just so much bull. We don’t live in the courtroom. If you make it possible for your client to walk out of the courtroom, free to commit other crimes, you share the responsibility for every one of those crimes.”

Giving a shake of her head, she picked up the fork and took a bite of beans, shredded beef and cheese. Though she wasn’t hungry and felt queasy, she forced herself to eat. She needed the strength if she was going to make it through one more day with Reese.

How had they ever hooked up together when they were such different people? Had the intense emotions they’d called love merely been stronger-than-usual lust? Had they wanted love so badly that they’d fooled themselves into believing they’d found it in each other? Surely at some point they’d realized that they could never make the relationship work. They must have known it was only a matter of time before their differences became so great that they couldn’t be overcome.

But she didn’t remember realizing any such thing. She’d loved Reese with all her heart. She’d believed they would be together forever. She’d thought differences of opinion were inconsequential in the face of such love. Maybe they would have been, if the love hadn’t been one-sided. If he had been as committed to her as she’d been to him, they could have withstood anything.

But he hadn’t been. At the first serious challenge they’d faced, he’d folded. Turned away from her. Betrayed her. Broken her heart.

“All right,” she said flatly. “You’ve been damning me for nine years. I’ll accept your blame, and I’ll share it with Leon, with Judy and every one of the deputies involved in his confession, with the sheriff of Keegan County, the district attorney, and with you. There’s plenty of guilt to go around, and I’ll take my portion if you’ll take yours.”

Why shouldn’t she? Despite her protests this morning that she’d done nothing wrong, she’d been living with her own guilt all those years. In the early months she’d tormented herself with it. What if she’d refused to represent Miller? What if she’d persuaded him to plead guilty in spite of the civil rights violations? What if she’d made it clear to the D.A. and the judge that she wouldn’t raise any questions about the way the confession was obtained? That even though the state’s entire case was tainted, she would stand quietly by and let her client go to prison because, after all, there was no question of his guilt?

It wouldn’t have been fair, but it might have been justice. And it wouldn’t have cost her much—just a lifetime of living with the knowledge that she’d betrayed her client and herself. Her ethics, her morals, her self-respect—the very essence of who she was—all would have been destroyed.

But Judy wouldn’t have been killed, and Reese wouldn’t have left her…though eventually she would have left him because her love would have been destroyed, too.

She ate as much of her lunch as she knew she could keep down, then pushed the plate away and lowered her face into her hands, rubbing her temples and the ache that seemed to have settled there permanently. She’d eased a bit of the tension when Reese spoke and the mere sound of his voice brought it racing back.

“Do you need some aspirin?”

She felt the tautness as her faint smile formed. “I need a new life—a normal life, where the people who say ‘I wish you were dead’ are generally talking out of anger or rebellion and aren’t really intending to plant a pipe bomb in your car or redecorate your bedroom with bullet holes. But since a normal life doesn’t seem likely at the moment, yes, aspirin would help.”

He went to the cabinet next to the sink, then came back with an open bottle. He shook two tablets into her palm, then sat again. After she’d washed the pills down with pop, he quietly asked, “Did Forbes do that?”

For a moment she considered not answering, but those were quite possibly the only non-accusing, non-bitter, non-hostile words he’d spoken to her. Besides, she was hiding in his house. If Forbes found her, the next car bombed might be Reese’s, the next house shot up, this one. It was only fair that he know.

Managing another tight smile, she nodded. “The verdict’s not in on the bomb yet—whether it malfunctioned or their timing was simply off—but I wasn’t in the car when it exploded. As for the shots in the night, I was lucky. The first one woke me up and I managed to crawl to safety. But don’t worry. They say the third time’s the charm. Then I’ll be out of your life for good.”

His features darkened into a scowl. “I don’t want—” Clenching his jaw on the denial, he dragged his fingers through his dark hair, then gave a shake of his head, as if he knew he was wasting his breath. “Look, we’re stuck here until Jace makes other arrangements, and God only knows when that will be. If we don’t start acting like reasonable adults, it’s going to be the most miserable time of our lives. We can either stay in our respective corners, or we can negotiate a truce.”

Staying in their corners hadn’t worked very well so far, Neely admitted. She felt as if she’d gone five rounds with a much better opponent and couldn’t possibly survive another five. Compromise was the only reasonable action, though it held risks of its own. If Reese quit attacking her, if he let her forget for one moment that he despised her, she could be foolish enough to fall for him all over again. He was more handsome than ever, surely—with others, at least—as charming as ever, and she’d always been so susceptible. She’d built such fantasies around them.

But he’d despised her so much more—and so much longer—than he’d ever loved her, and he wouldn’t forget, or let her forget. He was offering to compromise on his behavior, not his beliefs. That damning look in his eyes, the one that shadowed every other emotion he was feeling, would probably never go away, no matter what.

“So what do we do?” she asked. “Agree that certain topics are off-limits?”

Reese shrugged.

“The Miller case?”

“Your noble profession.”

Ignoring the sneer underlying his words, she smiled. “Your narrow-minded, damn-the-law-and-the-lawyers pigheadedness.”

He opened his mouth to refute her statement, then almost smiled. It had been so long since he’d smiled at her that she stared and made silent, fervent wishes that he would let the smile form. He didn’t. “At least we agree that we don’t think much of each other professionally.”

“You’re wrong, Reese. I always thought you were the best thing that ever happened to the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department…until you became just like the others.”

“I was never just like them,” he denied a little too quickly and too vehemently.

“Careful there. A person might think you find being compared to your former fellow deputies an insult, and that might suggest that you have a problem with the way they did their jobs. That maybe they weren’t always so right. Maybe I wasn’t always so wrong.”

After studying her a moment he mildly said, “It seems to me that discussion encompasses all three topics we just agreed were off limits. So…how are your sisters?”

It was entirely too normal a question, one that left her feeling unbalanced, as if the gibe would come in a moment, when she wasn’t prepared. She shrugged and cautiously replied, “My sisters are fine. Kylie is living in Dallas. Hallie is in Los Angeles, and Bailey lives in Memphis.”

“Any of them married?”

“Hallie just divorced number three—no kids, fortunately. Kylie and Bailey are waiting for the right guy. They’re learning from her example.”

“And yours?”

“Hallie’s got the relationship ‘dos and don’ts’ all to herself. I’m the ‘don’t’ for everything else.” Don’t try to make a difference. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can be important. Don’t care too deeply or too passionately about anything. Don’t mix relationship and career. Don’t work where you might make men with guns angry with you. And the biggie—Don’t piss off drug-dealing murderers.

“And your mother?”

“She’s also fine. She’s living in Illinois with husband number two. She golfs, cooks, plays doting grandmother to his grandkids and routinely complains that none of us has provided her with grandchildren of her own.” She heard the cynical note in her voice and was embarrassed by it. She’d long ago learned to not expect much from her mother. Doris Irene had done the best she could with the life she’d gotten. All she’d ever wanted to be was a wife, mother and grandmother, with a husband who would take care of all life’s problems so she wouldn’t have to bother her pretty little head with them. And that was what she’d gotten in the first ten years of her marriage.

Then the police had come in the middle of one winter night, kicking in doors, waving guns, shouting commands, and they’d taken Lee Madison away. To this day Neely remembered the cold, hard knot of terror in her stomach, her mother’s tears and her sisters’ screams. She’d stood there in her little flannel nightgown, the younger girls and Doris Irene huddled behind her sobbing, and her feet had felt like ice as she stared unflinchingly at the officers who dragged her father away.

“You never mentioned a father.”

Her startled gaze jerked to Reese. Seeing curiosity in his expression, she forced herself to relax, to breathe deeply and hopefully get some color back into her face. Under the protection of the table, she rubbed her hands together, her fingers as icy as her heart that long-ago night. “You never asked.”

“I figured he was a sore point. People who get along with their parents tend to bring them up from time to time. You never did.”

“I got along with him beautifully. I loved him dearly. I adored him.”

“Is he dead?”

The cold, hard knot was back, making it difficult to breathe. For years she couldn’t think about her father without bursting into tears, or dissolving into a nerveless, trembling heap. I’m not bitter, he’d told her the last time she’d seen him. She had been bitter for him. That was when she’d learned to truly, intensely, unforgivingly hate.

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