Snowbound with the Sheriff

by Laurel Greer

  “Yeah, early afternoon—”

  The engine noise cut off, and less than a minute later a key clicked in the lock. A gust of frigid air blew in, along with her brother.

  “It’s colder in here than it is out—” His gaze flicked from Stella, half-dressed, to her shirt from last night, discarded on the kitchen floor, to Ryan stumbling out of the bedroom in his boxers as he yanked a sweatshirt over his head. “Oh. The ‘body heat’ method. Fair enough.”

  Hot prickles rushed over Stella’s skin. Who needed a stoked fire when embarrassment did the job? “We didn’t...”

  Ugh, what’s the point? She started folding clothes and packing them into her backpack as quickly as possible. Time to put her new plan in place: get back to town, book a flight to New York and clean up her mess. But Lachlan’s smirk was too much to take to let him win.

  “We didn’t,” she repeated.

  “Yeah, you did.” Lachlan grinned. “I assumed with the sled issues and the isolation, you’d be tearing your hair out to leave. But I see. No wonder Ryan told me not to come out until the afternoon.”

  She froze. “What?”

  “That’s the message I got.” Her brother shot her a confused look.

  “Figured we didn’t need to rush,” Ryan grumbled.

  “You knew I wanted to get out of here ASAP,” she said. “I would have been packed up and ready to go had I known Lachlan would be coming early.”

  Lachlan shifted uncomfortably, and his snow gear rustled. “I’ll go out and take a look at the damage while you two figure out what you want to do. We’ll have to take two trips on the snowmobile.”

  She glared at Ryan, who winced.

  I want to show you who I am now. As if.

  The second the door banged shut, she laid into him. “You lied. Why? Were you planning on getting into my pants last night? Because if it actually was about proving you’ve changed, your strategy sucked. Unless being the golden sheriff requires being heavy-handed and making unilateral decisions?”

  He swore. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t send that message on purpose, Stella. But it wasn’t with the intent of sleeping with you. I just wanted...”

  She waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. He sighed and busied himself with packing his small amount of gear.

  “You wanted what?” she pressed.

  “Nothing that matters now.”

  Anger flared up the back of her neck. “No way. You don’t get to slough off like that, with a half-baked excuse and apology. You know how much honesty matters to me. My dad lied to my mom all the time and—” She closed her eyes and rocked from her crouching position to sitting on her ass on the cold wood floor. Overreact much? She and Ryan were the definition of a one-night stand. Her parents’ screwed-up marriage and divorce had nothing to do with this. “Ignore that. You’re right—none of this matters.”

  He crossed his arms and set his jaw, as if they were back on the side of the snowy road and he was handing her a ticket. Impossible to go back to that sense of naive anger, though.

  Everything that had happened since he’d arrived at the cabin—hell, since she’d arrived in Sutter Creek—all mattered.

  When she stepped on that plane to return to Manhattan, she’d be leaving part of herself behind again.

  “Glad we agree,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s better this way. And I tell you what—take your belongings out with you on your brother’s sled. I’ll clean up here, and he can come back and get me. I’ll bring your cooler and water jugs and the garbage out then. That way you can be home as fast as possible.”

  She couldn’t argue with that, so she stood and stalked toward the kitchen area to check for things she needed to bring back today. He stopped her with one big hand on her shoulder, a hot brand despite the wool of her sweater.

  He bent his head to her ear. “I won’t claim I was right about the message I sent your brother. But last night, did I once not listen to what you wanted?”

  Jerking her gaze to his, she stuttered, “N-no.”

  “And have I ever, since you got here, treated you with the kind of disrespect your father laid on your mother?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Or acted in any way that would suggest I’m the risk-taking asshole you used to date?”

  She shook her head.

  He released her shoulder. “Good. Because I can’t control where you live or what you want out of life, Stella, but I intend to make damn sure that you know that if you did live in town, I’d be doing everything I could to make you happy. And that was the reason I told Lachlan to come later.”

  “You—” Her mouth was so dry, she almost choked on the word. She swallowed, then licked her lips. Neither worked. She still sounded like she’d been horseback riding in the desert when she continued. “Make me happy now. Starting with not throwing meaningless promises around.”

  “Meaningless. Right.” Eyes wide, he backed up and shoved his feet into his boots and his arms into his jacket. “I’ll leave you to pack. See you in town.”

  He tromped out of the cabin, his bootlaces dragging behind him. The door banged shut, leaving her alone once again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was pushing late afternoon by the time Lachlan dropped off Ryan at his truck in the skiers’ overnight lot. The couple of hours of silence at the cabin while cleaning up, along with the hourlong ride home, had provided plenty of thinking time. The ride back had been squishy, given Lachlan was only a couple of inches shorter than Ryan, but complaining would’ve been tacky given the ferry service had taken up most of the afternoon.

  Lachlan sat on his sled in the snowy parking lot by the tailgate of Ryan’s pickup, sizing him up. He’d cut the engine, allowing them to hear the hum of the nearby ski lifts. “I should get back home—Marisol’s off and we were supposed to have some family time.”

  Ryan winced. “Crap, sorry.”

  “Stella’s family, too. And you did her a favor, so I was just returning it.”

  “Not sure your sister would call what I did a favor—not anymore.” Yeah, his lie had been small, but dishonesty was dishonesty. He’d promised to put any trace of his old, corner-cutting youth behind him. And the fact he was so quick to manipulate when dealing with Stella was a bad habit he didn’t want to get back into.

  Even if it had gotten them one passionate night together.

  But now that he and Stella had agreed to one-and-done, he had to set that aside and focus on figuring out the cattle theft and keeping the peace and looking toward the election.

  All things that required checking in at the detachment, so after saying goodbye to Lachlan and stopping by Tom Reid’s to pick up the dog, he went to the emergency-services building.

  After clipping a leash on Puddle, he donned a baseball cap to cover his rumpled cabin hair and strode into the building.

  A tall woman with killer legs stood at the reception desk next to Graydon Halloran. Not the legs that had been wrapped around him last night, but Emma’s.

  He pasted on a smile. “Two Hallorans for the price of one. Managed to dig out from under the snow, I take it?”

  Gray, who was leaning sideways with one elbow on the high counter, nodded. He wasn’t wearing his customary smirk.

  Emma came over and kneeled next to Puddle, who immediately rolled onto her back and presented her belly. “Oh, were you lonely after being without your daddy for the weekend? So hard done by.”

  Ryan snorted. “She was with Tom Reid all weekend. Got spoiled far more than if she’d been with me.” He noticed dark circles under Emma’s eyes. “You okay, Em? Snow keep you up?”

  Her expression darkened and she stood.

  Graydon straightened, his mouth flat. “We were up with Mom last night. Appears thieves used the blizzard as cover. We lost stock in the west pasture.”

  “What?”
Ryan’s sheriff mode kicked in. His brain started running possibilities, including a major one—why hadn’t the undersheriff notified him via sat comm? Anger ripped up his spine, along with a good deal of shame for being unavailable during a crisis. “Excuse me. I need to go get caught up.” He glanced down at his dog. “Damn it. I don’t want to waste time by taking Puddle home, but I can’t leave her in my truck.”

  “Give me your house key. I’ll let her in for you,” Emma said, holding her hand out for the leash.

  An hour later he was out at RG Ranch, examining the makeshift fence that had replaced the one the thieves had compromised.

  “The snow erased all tracks?” he asked his undersheriff, Nathaniel Wilson, who’d attended the call and managed the investigation this morning.

  The rich brown skin of Nate’s forehead wrinkled. “Anything useful.”

  “Damn it,” Ryan grumbled. “I should have been here.”

  Georgie Halloran lifted an eyebrow, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her shearling coat. “We all missed it, Ryan. Even with regular patrols.”

  “You’ve changed your tune about my level of dedication to my job,” he said before he could stop himself.

  She drew back. “Feel free to take days off, Sheriff. It was who you were with that worries me, not that you were out of range for a night.”

  “Two nights,” Nate corrected.

  Ryan sent a “thanks for nothing” look at his second-in-command before softening his gaze for Georgie’s sake. Nate snorted and strolled off, examining a different fence section.

  “Stella and I are on the same page,” Ryan said to the older woman. “Both of us have too much going on at work to even consider a long-distance relationship.” It would be stupid to essentially pack his heart in her suitcase when she left the state. He’d done that once—his fault. And this time would be no different. If he got attached in any way, it was on him.

  “It’s not a long-distance relationship that worries me,” she confessed.

  Good grief. She’d really dug her nails into the impossible, hadn’t she? “Let’s focus on the task at hand.”

  Weariness pulled at Georgie’s mouth. “I dunno, Sheriff. If we keep getting hit like this, Rich and I might need to look at other options.”

  Fear stirred in his belly. “For where you put your support in the upcoming campaign?”

  “Not exactly. For what we do with the ranch.”

  A gust of wind struck him, driving home her uncertainty. “Georgie, we’ll track trucks at the highway stops, send alerts to slaughterhouses—”

  Her shoulders slumped. “They’re already gone, Sheriff. We both know that.”

  He did. If they managed to recover fifteen percent of stolen cattle in any given year, they were above average.

  So work harder.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Give me a few days.”

  Good thing he didn’t need to spend time thinking about Stella. He’d be lucky if he slept this week, let alone worry about the woman who had thrown him for a loop. Again.

  * * *

  Don’t book a ticket home yet. If you want to be eligible for an SEC payout, you need to make sure you don’t put yourself in a situation where you’d break your NDA.

  Stella sat in her sister’s kitchen, staring at the email from her lawyer. What the hell? Wait longer? No.

  It was too late on the East Coast to call, but she could at least email back.

  What? How does informing the authorities and wearing a wire to work for months not prove that I’d keep my mouth shut if I was back at the office?

  Her hands shook with impatience. Damn it. She had not expected to come back from the cabin to yet another holding pattern.

  Her phone dinged and an envelope icon appeared.

  These things don’t move fast. Hoyt’s bail hearing is in the morning. Gill still thinks distance is best. Let’s see what happens before you make plans.

  Before she made plans? She already had plans. Maintain some level of control in how she left her firm and start networking. And she couldn’t do that stuck in Montana.

  Stomping to the guest room, she frantically scanned the space for something—anything—to do. Her unpacked duffel caught her eye. Sad day when laundry seemed like a lifesaver. She dug through her bag, tossing her dirty clothes into the basket in the corner of the guest room. The yellow bra she’d worn yesterday landed on top of the fuchsia panties she hadn’t put on after cleaning up post–tree removal, an eye-searing reminder of her bad decisions. She pulled out one last article. A shirt. Ryan’s. Irritation prickled her chest. How had it gotten mixed in with her clothes?

  Because you stripped each other naked so quickly that you didn’t pay attention to what was going where? And this morning your freaking brother interrupted, and you packed with the attention level of a toddler?

  Her stomach wobbled and she forced herself not to bring the shirt to her nose to inhale his sexy, masculine scent. If she kept the stupid thing lying around, she’d probably get all weak and end up sleeping in it.

  Grrr.

  Better to return it than fall into sappy habits like that.

  Ten minutes later, she knocked on his front door.

  It swung open, but there was no grumpy sheriff in sight.

  Emma Halloran stood in the doorway, holding Puddle by the collar and wearing a suspicious expression. “Stella, hey.”

  Wow. He’d come straight home to Emma? What the actual garbage was that? Stella’s heart fell to the stoop. She swore she heard it roll off the edge and land in the winter-denuded hydrangea. The empty pain of betrayal seared her to her core. Her eyes stung and she swallowed hard. He’d said he wasn’t interested in Emma. And he might not owe Stella anything, but maybe a little courtesy would be nice, like let a freaking week pass before he invited another woman into his bed.

  She lifted her chin and held out the T-shirt, extending her other hand to the dog, who was wiggling around Emma’s perfect legs like an out-of-control ride at the summer fair. The gesture earned her a lick. All she really wanted was to bury her face in the Labrador’s neck and sob, but no way was she going to show weakness in front of this woman. Nor did she want to see Ryan’s face if he was home.

  “This got tangled up with my things at the cabin,” she explained. “If you can give it to Ryan...”

  Emma shrugged and backed up. “Come on in and put it where you like. I’m just here dropping off the dog. When he found out that livestock were stolen from my parents’ place last night, he took off like a bat out of hell.”

  Oh. Jump to conclusions much? Guilt swooped in, almost as quickly as the feeling of betrayal had.

  Stella’s arm fell to her side. “Your reasons for being in Ryan’s house are none of my business.”

  Emma made an “I don’t believe you” face.

  “And you’re just going to let me in? I thought your mom had me pegged as a criminal,” she said.

  Emma rolled her eyes. “Yeah, my mom. Not me. And Ryan just spent the weekend with you, and clothing removal was involved, so...”

  Entering the main room, Stella folded the shirt neatly and laid it on the nearest surface—the back of the couch that divided the space into a living area and the dining room. “Just because I’m in possession of his shirt doesn’t mean I was the one who removed it. Or that I was even around when it was removed,” she said, turning to leave.

  Oh, God, Stella, just stop talking.

  “You’re as much of a liar as your sister,” Emma said, a laugh in her tone.

  Stella whirled to face her. “What? Some friend you are, insulting Maggie like—”

  “About being in love,” Emma chided. “Maggie’s super loyal. And I bet you are, too. But I watched her pretend she didn’t have a thing for Asher last fall. And you’re wearing the same ‘passing a kidney stone’ look on your face.”


  “What?”

  “I’ll be honest with you—if Ryan were interested in me, I’d be there in a second. But his heart’s not up for the taking. I can’t fight with that.”

  Good. She hated the idea of Ryan being with anyone else. Which was awful, because Emma seemed to be a truly nice person, and Ryan deserved to find love with someone...

  But I wish it could be me.

  “I’m not in love with Ryan.” Stomach twisting, Stella took a step back. “Seriously. Go for it.” She almost choked on the words.

  Emma’s gaze flicked to the T-shirt. Her mouth turned down. “Go for it? You don’t mean that.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  Stella stepped into the foyer. “I’m only here temporarily. And I think his grandmother—along with a good chunk of his voting base—would have a stroke if he and I had a fling. I don’t want to screw up his election chances.”

  “There are opportunities to work in finance in Montana. Not exactly what you’ve been doing, but if you have an MBA, you have options.”

  “Again, that criminal thing.”

  Emma waved a hand. “You don’t think that will blow over?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “I bet my uncle would love some new blood to work on project management for the mountain.”

  “AlpinePeaks?” Stella knew it by reputation—it was well-respected and known for growth. But it didn’t carry the prestige of working on Wall Street. That had been her target for so long. To give it up, to quit? Humiliating. “I’m not a project manager—”

  Ugh, why was she talking to this woman about career prospects? Puddle rubbed up against her leg, begging for affection. She threaded her fingers into the dog’s thick fur and took a breath. “Thanks for letting me in. I’d better go.”

  The last thing she wanted was for Ryan to get home and have to pretend that they hadn’t spent all of last night naked. She left, resting her head on her steering wheel as soon as she got inside her rental car.

  She’d maximize her last few days in Sutter Creek with her family—who knew when she’d be able to get back if she was reestablishing herself at the firm, or potentially a new workplace?