“But you weren’t being the real you when we were together. You kept telling me to take risks, and you didn’t.”
“Because as soon as we were together, I was afraid of losing you, this time for good. You are who you are, Gabby, without apologies, without limits and to me, that’s a pretty brave thing. I admire that about you.” He took her hand in his, sending a zing through her veins. “Right or wrong, your attitude has always been take me as I am, with that pink streak in your hair and the zebra boots and all the things that make you who you are. And you know what? Who you are is pretty damned incredible. Strong and sassy and smart, and braver than me.”
“Braver? I don’t think so.” She thought of all the fear of failure she’d felt in the past few years, how long it had taken her to get her career rolling again, to risk rejection by sending work to that gallery in Chicago. She didn’t feel brave. Far from it. Those moments of fear had cost her so much. “I wasn’t brave enough to tell you how I felt all those years ago.”
“How you felt? But I thought—”
She shrugged, giving him a shy smile. What sense was there in keeping the truth from him any longer? “I fell for you in high school but I didn’t realize how I felt until you were gone and it was too late.”
His grin spread like hot butter inside her. “It’s not too late, Gabby. And maybe it’s better we waited all this time, because now we’ve lived our lives and we know what we want. Who we want.”
A row of puffy clouds drifted overhead and the soft sounds of passing traffic hung in the air. Winter still held its crisp, cold grip on Wyoming, but between her and T.J. the air was heated, charged with years of unanswered desire. They’d let so much time pass—too much.
“You’ve always pushed me to take chances,” T.J. went on, “to be my own person. That scared the hell out of me because I knew I’d pay the price for every misstep when I got home.”
“I’m sorry. I never should have talked you into half the stunts we did.”
“You didn’t talk me into them. I wanted to do those things, even if I argued sometimes. I’m damned grateful for every chance I took, for every single adventure, and for all the consequences. Because that gave me the courage to start my own business. To come after you in a helicopter and make a big statement about how I felt.” He took her hands. “Now I’m asking you to do the same. To go after what you want instead of running away.”
She gestured toward the camera sitting in the bag a few feet away. “I am going after what I want.”
“In your career, yes, but not in here.” His fingers danced up her chest. “I’m in love with you, Gabby. I have been since that day you ate the chips in the chemistry lab. You confounded me and challenged me and made my life better just by being my friend. I couldn’t forget you, and now I know why. Because I still love you. These few days have been some of the happiest I can remember in a long, long time. And now I know I want more than what we shared back then, I want it all. I don’t want to spend a single day without you ever again.”
“T.J.—” She shook her head, then paused and faced the truth about herself, about the years apart from T.J. He wasn’t the one who had deserted her—she had done it to him. And right now, she felt the old familiar fears rising in her, pushing her to run again. Instead, she held her ground. “I’ve been afraid all my life, of getting close, of trusting, of screwing up. When you told me how you felt that day, I panicked, instead of being honest. And I pushed you away.”
“I would have understood, Gabby. We all make mistakes.”
She moved away from him and crossed to the pyramid. The triangular shaped walls offered a break from the wind and a shadow beneath the winter sun. “My biggest mistake was pretending I wanted you and me to be just friends when I really wanted…”
“What?”
Gabby pivoted toward T.J. and looked up into the eyes that she’d first noticed years ago, back in elementary school. “From the day you made that little explosion in chemistry class, I was hooked on you. I invited you along on my adventures because I wanted to spend time with you, to see you. You were smart, funny, and sexy as hell in those glasses.”
He grinned. “I can go back to wearing them.”
Gabby reached up and placed a palm against his cheek. “I don’t know. I kinda like seeing your eyes all the time. I’ve loved these eyes for a long time, even if I took years to tell you.”
“Then I’ll make sure you see them every day.” He reached in his breast pocket and tossed his sunglasses to the side. Gabby laughed, Charlie barked, and T.J. took the woman he loved into his arms. “What took us so long to finally figure out what we wanted?”
“Life’s a journey, T.J. Some of us just take the long road.”
“As long as it leads me to you.” He leaned down and kissed her, a sweet kiss filled with love and promise and a taste of forever. She curved into him and thought she could stay in his arms for the rest of her life.
But not on this windy plain in Wyoming. After a while, T.J. waved off the helicopter and they walked back toward Gabby’s car, arm in arm. “You promised we’d see the world’s largest ball of popcorn, you know,” T.J. said. “It’s back in Iowa somewhere. We missed it.”
“Who needs the world’s largest ball of popcorn?” Gabby asked. She smiled up at T.J. and held his hand tight. “I have everything I need right here.”
Charlie barked in agreement, then pressed his little body against their legs, as content and happy as a matchmaking, career-saving terrier could be.
The three of them hopped in the car, pointed west, and embarked on a brand-new journey together.
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shirley Jump spends her days writing romance and women’s fiction to feed her shoe addiction and avoid cleaning the toilets. She cleverly finds writing time by feeding her kids junk food, allowing them to dress in the clothes they find on the floor and encouraging the dogs to double as vacuum cleaners.
The Sheriff’s Secret
Susan Meier
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Susan Meier. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Shannon Godwin and Libby Murphy
Cover design by Libby Murphy
Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-217-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition October 2013
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Mercedes Benz, American Heart Association, Jack Russell, James Bond
Chapter One
“9-1-1 Operator, what’s your emergency?”
“This is Marney Fields. Someone’s in my house.” Hiding in her master bedroom closet—behind two rows of dresses—Marney worked to level her breathing so she wouldn’t hyperventilate.
“Are you at the address you’re calling from?”
She turned away from the door and whispered into her cordless phone, “Yes.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Someone will be at your house in a few minutes. Stay where you are.”
She sucked in a breath and huddled a little deeper into the corner behind her dresses, her heart racing, her knees knocking. All her life she’d wanted to live in the country. But her very first night of sleeping in the mini-mansion she’d built for herself five miles outside of Chandler’s Cove, Illinois, every creak of a floor board or swish of the wind had brought visions of bur
glars and serial killers to mind.
She’d checked her security system eighty times, but her frightening thoughts still ran rampant. So when she’d heard the bang coming from her kitchen, her heart had about exploded. She’d grabbed her cordless phone, run up the stairs, and hastily dialed 9-1-1.
And here she stood. In the closet. Behind her dresses. Shivering.
One minute turned into two. Two became three. Three chugged along to four. With every minute that ticked off the clock, her chest tightened. Her breathing became shallower.
Footsteps sounded outside her door.
Her heart punched against her ribs. The police had scared her intruder upstairs! And he was in her bedroom!
She searched for a weapon but the best she could find was a plastic hanger. She grabbed it and held it up.
She’d finally made it as a jewelry designer. A home shopping network had picked up her line of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, and she had money pouring in. She’d built this home, could vacation anywhere she wanted. She had a Mercedes on order for God’s sake! She was not going down without a fight.
The door burst open. She yelped a battle cry and foisted her hanger like a sword. The man jumped back.
“Whoa! Whoa! Wait a minute! Are you Marney Fields?”
She swiped the hanger at him.
“I’m Sheriff O’Neil.” He shoved his gun into its holster and displayed his ID.
That’s when she noticed his gray uniform, complete with gray winter jacket to ward off the cold from an unexpected April snow storm.
He eased the hanger out of her shaking hand. “Relax. I’m your neighbor.” He pointed to the right. “I live about two miles down that road. It was quicker for me to come over than send a patrol car.”
A mixture of embarrassment and relief washed through her in dizzying waves.
“Are you okay?”
She peeked up at him. “I heard a noise.”
He smiled sympathetically. “That’s not unusual in a new house.”
His sympathy upped her embarrassment to humiliation. She squeezed her eyes shut.
He chuckled. “Come on. Open your eyes. It’s smart to call the police when you think you’re in trouble.”
Her mortification ebbed. She opened her eyes and attempted a smile. “Sorry.”
“No need to say you’re sorry.”
He shoved his ID into his back pocket, drawing her gaze to his trim hips. It climbed up his flat stomach, along his broad chest, to the chiseled features of his perfect face.
Yum.
In three years of living in Chandler’s Cove after her divorce, she’d heard about the gorgeous sheriff. She’d seen him walking down the street or driving in his car, but had never seen him up close. His disheveled black hair reminded her of long nights spent making love. His gray-blue eyes probably glowed in the dark. And that body…Wow. Sexy was too simple of a word to describe him. Sensual was better. But rugged and masculine fit. The man oozed masculinity.
Attraction shimmered through her along with a jolt of pure lust. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. It had been a long time since a man had turned her on with his looks alone. But this guy definitely had.
“Ms. Fields?”
Her gaze flew to his face. “Huh?”
“I said I’m going to have another look outside, but I’d also like to suggest that you get an alarm system—” He paused. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Yeah.” Who was she kidding? She wasn’t okay. She was melting. She saw good-looking guys all the time when she went to the television studio to do the shows for her jewelry. But this guy was different. Broad-shouldered and dressed in a neat-as-a-pin uniform, he could make a nun question her decision to be celibate.
“Do you need to sit down?”
“Um. No.” She cleared her throat. “And I have an alarm system.”
“Do you know how to work it?”
Confused, she frowned. “Yes, I know how to work it.”
He grinned. “Why don’t you just let me check it out?”
“Sure.”
She followed him out of her soothing gray and yellow master bedroom. Her gaze automatically traveled from his broad shoulders down his torso to his butt, and she almost groaned. Perfect. Of course.
She shook her head. The trick to surviving his visit would be to quit looking at him. Especially his butt.
Their footsteps echoed around them as they walked down the circular stairway of the grand foyer. When he got to the bottom step, he said, “You’re going to have to get accustomed to hearing noises in here. A house with a ceiling this high is bound to have lots of echoes.”
“Right.” More hormones awoke at the deep, masculine sound of his voice. Holding her head high and pretending she wasn’t fighting the urge to rip off his shirt, she marched to the control box for the alarm then stepped out of the way.
He walked over, hit a few buttons, and a green light blinked on. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, he faced her. “That might have been the problem.”
She swallowed and simply stared, wondering if he knew how lucky he was to have such beautiful eyes, a chiseled chin, and sculpted cheek bones.
A few seconds ticked by before she realized her foyer was silent and he was staring at her. And not the way she was staring at him—with undisguised interest—but with disgust.
He shook his head and turned away. “You’re fine.” His voice took on a hard tone. “I’ll do one more check outside then I’ll swing back in to make sure you’re okay. But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t make any more 9-1-1 calls to meet your neighbors.”
“What?”
“It’s wrong to call 9-1-1 for anything other than a genuine emergency. In fact, it’s a crime.”
Mortification replaced attraction. “Do you think I called 9-1-1 to get to meet you?”
“Look. I’ve seen you around town for a couple of years now. Which means you probably knew I lived out here and that I’m the person who’d be dispatched when you called.”
“I heard a noise!”
“I’m sure you did. And I’m sure you forgot to set the alarm too.”
“I didn’t forget to set the alarm! I was so afraid to be living out here in the dark that I kept checking it all night. I must have hit the button and knocked it off one of those times I was messing with it.”
“Right.”
He didn’t believe her! Her breath caught. She pressed her hand to her chest. “I called the police—not you—because I was terrified.”
Instead of the apology she as expecting, the room became incredibly quiet. He really didn’t believe her. And she was only making things worse by arguing.
She lifted her chin. “Actually, there’s no need to come back after you check my yard. I’m fine. You can go.”
He walked toward her front door. “I’ll be back anyway.” He turned and grinned at her. “For one more look.”
The double meaning of that statement cut through her like an embarrassing knife. Not only did he not believe her, now he was laughing at her.
“I said I was fine.”
His gaze rippled from her head to her toes. His lips lifted into a confident smile but he didn’t reply.
He walked out the front door and she plopped down on the third step of the stairway.
Get ahold of yourself, Marney!
Oh, right. Get a hold of herself. It was little late for that. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d behaved like a teenager in heat. So she couldn’t fault the sheriff for making a bad assumption. He was incredibly good looking, and women probably did do weird things like call 9-1-1 to get to meet him. Plus, her situation did appear odd. But once she’d explained that she really had heard a noise and she’d probably accidentally turned off her alarm, he should have understood. Actually, he should have apologized for accusing her of calling 9-1-1 just to get him to her house. Instead, he thought she was some kind of sex starved�
��idiot.
He returned about ten minutes later, flashlight in hand, but he didn’t step inside. As if afraid of her, he stayed on her front porch, telling her not to worry, she was safe now. Then he grinned his infuriating I-know-you’re-attracted-to-me grin and left.
Marney fell to her steps again and covered her head with her hands. She’d just made a colossal fool of herself.
…
Driving back to his house, Sheriff Dell O’Neil shook his head in wonder. Local jewelry shop owner Marney Fields was a beautiful woman with her long brown hair and dark eyes that flashed when she’d realized he’d noticed her sizing him up.
Lucky for her, he wasn’t interested in romantic entanglements or he probably could have taken her on her Italian marble floor.
But her image popped into his brain as he got ready for bed and again the next morning when he drove past her house. He thought about her when he walked by the little shop she had on Main Street and again when he drove home at about three. Worse, he thought about her on the long drive to his parents’ house in Chicago to attend a fund raiser for his parents’ pet charity.
Since his divorce, he hadn’t allowed any woman to rent space in his head and he had no idea why Marney Fields had suddenly set up residence there. But he did know he would get her out.
…
After work Friday afternoon, Marney drove to Chicago, grateful to be getting out of town. After her embarrassing encounter with Sheriff O’Neil, she needed the weekend to chill out.
She had a fundraiser to attend that night, an exhibit of the work of several up-and-coming artists. The gallery owner had committed his share of the profits to the Heart Association, one of her favorite charities. But more than that, this was payback for all the people who had supported her exhibits when she was new. Divorced, just starting out as a jewelry designer, she’d appreciated the gallery’s support and the money she made from her exhibits. She would definitely buy something tonight.
On Saturday morning, she would visit her parents, endure the cool reception she’d become accustomed to since her divorce from Doug Stover, Attorney at Law, and come home appreciating the fact that she lived an hour away from them.
The Billionaire's Matchmaker: An Indulgence Anthology (Entangled Indulgence) Page 7