by Ryanne Corey
She gave him a look that said, “I didn’t ask you to,” then pushed open the door and climbed out. Slam. She opened the door to the back and pulled out her duffel bag. Slam. “For a little bit of a thing,” Tyler remarked through the open window, “You swing a mean car door.”
Ignoring him, she hoisted the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder and headed for the office. A stinging-hot shower of resentment prickled at her from her head to her toes. She was staying in a place she didn’t want to stay, for no reason other than it suited the overbearing sheriff of Bridal Veil Falls. The man took his job way, way, way too seriously.
“Hey, Trouble. One more thing.”
She stopped, gritting her teeth as she slowly turned on her heel. “What?”
“Have a nice night. We aim to please here in Bride Falls on Her Head.” His tawny head was hanging out the window, hatless and backlit with the dying glow of sunset. He looked like an adorable Boy Scout trying to do a good deed, but she wasn’t fooled for a minute. “Let me know if you need anything.”
She gave him the most insincere smile of her life, followed by the most insincere statement of her life: “It’s been wonderful meeting you, Mr. Sheriff, sir.”
She turned and walked into the office without another word. She had a rhythm to her walk when she was irritated, a sassy little strut that she gave full rein to. Had she looked over her shoulder, she would have gotten yet another surprise.
Tyler Cook was smiling as if Heaven itself had just shown itself to him.
It was a typical motel room. The mattress was extra-firm, except in the middle where it was extrasoft. The pillows seemed to be made of plywood, and the air smelled strongly of disinfectant. The only window provided an aluminum frame for the blinking sign of the bowling alley across the street. Ritz Classic Bowl. Lounge, Leagues and Open Play. Plenty of Fun for Everyone!
Jenny sat on the bed like a zombie and watched the motel room change colors along with the bowling alley sign: red, yellow, green, red again. There was simply nothing else to do. She’d already showered, made a trip outside in her ratty chenille robe to the soft-drink machine for a cola, and watched an ancient rerun of Mr. Ed on television. It was barely eight o’clock, and she was wide awake and couldn’t sit still. Nights were especially hard for her. Everything seemed intensified when the world wound down, grew quiet and dark. Her restlessness. Her memories. That lonely, aching place called the future, always waiting for her. She took it one day at a time, but no matter how many days, months, years she crossed off, the future was always just as vast and just as empty. No matter how many tomorrows she put behind her, they never seemed to grow easier or less intimidating.
She needed to keep moving, and this motel room was not the place to do it. She liked to have her mind occupied with unfamiliar places, unfamiliar things, unfamiliar people. In fact, anything unfamiliar was oddly comforting. She never went to bed before midnight, anyway, and never slept more than three or four hours at a time. Regardless of how tired she was—and Lord knew tonight her muscles had no more strength than limp spaghetti—her soul perpetually resisted rest.
She stood up abruptly, dressing in a clean pair of jeans and a rather wrinkled white cotton peasant shirt pulled from her duffel bag. Five minutes later her still-damp hair was curling wildly in the breeze as she walked across the street to the bowling alley. The night air had a bite to it; she made a mental note to buy herself a warm coat before she left town in the morning. She was thinking about making a little detour into Canada for a couple of weeks. She’d never been there before, and she’d heard it was an incredibly beautiful country. Originally she’d had vague plans of wandering down south to the warmer climes of New Mexico and visiting an artist’s colony she’d heard about, but she could always do that later. Plans were made to be broken, especially hers. Spending the night in Bride Falls on Her Head wasn’t the end of the world. She had to sleep somewhere, so there was no point getting all worked up about it.
Or that’s what she told herself. Still, it was hard to ignore the raw nerves prickling under her skin. Ordinarily Jenny found it easier to be indifferent than offended, but there was something about Tyler Cook that jarred her senses, making them unusually acute. He was somehow different from other people she had met. He stood out from the blurred, forgettable crowd. It might have been the power of his tantalizing features, his perception or his sense of the absurd, but somehow she knew he was a man to be reckoned with. Jenny had no interest in reckoning with any man. Besides, in some secret corner of her mind, she knew she would come up short in a confrontation with him. He’d proved it once already, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to do it again. No, she told herself. I won’t think about the square-jawed man with the devil in his blue eyes. And that’s the end of it.
She walked through the doors of the bowling alley into an explosion of light, laughter and deafening sound. The confusion and noise had a soothing effect on her, distracting her from her thoughts. She took a seat at the snack bar, a good vantage point from which to observe the good citizens of Bridal Veil Falls on a high-flying Friday night.
The lanes were all full, which didn’t really surprise her. There couldn’t be too much to do in a town this size. There were several teenage boys with their dates, a half dozen men in orange bowling shirts in league play and a few families bowling together. Everyone wore gosh-awful red-and-green bowling shoes. Jenny’s gaze skimmed the laughing children and parents without focusing on individuals. Years of long experience had taught her that some things were better avoided.
Still, there was something about the young family bowling in the nearest lane to her that caught and held her attention. Two chubby little boys wearing matching yellow sweatshirts and baggy, blue-striped shorts were working as a team, huffing and puffing as they lugged a heavy bowling ball halfway down the lane. There they dropped it into the gutter with a resounding thud and turned around to accept their parents’ applause. The little boys’ blue eyes were shining like sequins.
Twins.
Try as she might, Jenny was unable to tear her gaze away from those identical, adorable snub-nosed faces. They couldn’t be more than three or four years old. Their hair was the same white-blond shade as the young woman’s seated at the scoring desk—eye-catching and unusual.
Happy with their achievement, the little boys laughed and shuffled their way back to their seats in bowling shoes twice the size of their feet. Jenny saw that the laces were undone, dragging behind them on the ground. Their noses were both peeling with sunburn and each sported a Band-Aid on one knee. That was the way it was with twins. What happened to one always seemed to happen to the other.
No. Not always.
The inward voice cut through Jenny’s thoughts like the blade of a knife. She shivered, biting down hard on her lip. It was time to concentrate on something else, anything else, the first thing that came to mind…
“Tyler, double-knot their shoelaces, will you? They won’t stay tied.”
Hearing the instructions from the twins’ mommy, directed at the man sitting on the bench with his back to her, Jenny’s gaze stretched. The man had unmistakable hair, glittering with rainbow shades of dark gold and warm bronze. Unmistakable shoulders, filling out every inch of a well-washed blue chambray shirt. He slid off the bench, going down on one knee to tie shoelaces. Jenny saw a Greek god profile and a lean, law-abiding jaw. Unmistakably Sheriff Tyler Cook.
Good grief, he was the daddy. His resemblance to those little boys was amazing.
For a stunned moment Jenny couldn’t draw air into her lungs. It had never occurred to her that the irritating enforcer of the law might be married, though she couldn’t say exactly why. It might have been the way he teased her with those come-hither, beach-boy-blue eyes. Married men weren’t supposed to flirt. They weren’t supposed to smile the way he had smiled at her, showing off his boyish dimples and his cowboy country charm. He had deliberately misled her, that’s what he had done.
If looks coul
d kill, Sheriff Cook would have met a nasty end right there on the paisley commercial carpeting at the Ritz Classic Bowl. He must have felt the daggers shooting into his back from the snack bar. He suddenly turned his head and looked directly at Jenny. She didn’t have time to turn away, she didn’t have time to compose her expression. They locked gazes, and he had the bloody nerve to send her one of his quizzical, blistering smiles. He saw her shock but showed absolutely no sign of embarrassment.
A single thought came to Jenny—there had been way too many intrusive emotions for one day. It was time to/turn off. She felt as if she were shrinking, separating from all the lights and noise around her, withdrawing into a well-guarded, secret cocoon. She shot off the bar stool as if it were made of red-hot coals. Hands pushed deep in her pockets, she plowed through the bowling alley with her determined gaze focused on the exit doors. Someone had spilled popcorn on the carpet; she could hear it crunching beneath her feet. Her peripheral vision caught a flash of blue as Tyler moved in her direction. Swallowing hard, she quickened her stride to a jog, but he caught up with her a good twenty feet before she reached the doors. Naturally. She had him pegged as the type who always got his man, even when his man was a woman.
He parked his tall body directly in front of her, putting an end to her flight for freedom. His smile was wide, brash and unabashedly cheerful. “If it isn’t my old friend, Trouble. This is about the last place I expected you to wander into.”
Jenny thought about his little family not fifty feet away, happy and oblivious to his true nature. Her blood simmered. “I’m sure it is. It must have been quite a surprise for you.”
“I like surprises,” he said. “I always have. That’s what makes ordinary life interesting—all the little, unexpected things. Besides, you just saved me a trip to the motel. I was about to go over and check on you. I had this nagging feeling you might try and skip town on me.” He put his hand on her arm to stop her as she tried to duck around him. “What’s your hurry? You seem awfully anxious to get through that door. I’m being nice. I haven’t tried to arrest you once.”
“The night is young,” Jenny muttered, using two fingers to remove his hand from her arm. “Don’t worry, Sheriff. I gave you my word that I’ll stick around until tomorrow morning, like a good little prisoner.”
“There’s that touching thing again,” Tyler commented, his mouth tucking thoughtfully to one side. “Is it just me you’re allergic to, or all human contact?”
She looked into this stranger’s eyes, rattled by the shadowed glimpse of compassion there. Insight, understanding, communication…she wasn’t interested in any of the above. Warning bells erupted in her head, much louder than the commotion of the bowling alley. She opened her mouth to toss back a careless, flippant remark—she was very good at that—but to her surprise, her mind remained stubbornly blank. Her fingers plucked restlessly at the gauzy fabric of her shirt, knowing that her momentary confusion was obvious.
“Just an observation,” Tyler said, a different tone in his voice. Ever so briefly he touched the back of his knuckles to her uplifted chin. His lips carried the faintest hint of a smile. “See? That didn’t hurt so much, did it? Relax. When I’m not in uniform, I hardly ever bite.”
His hand was right back at his side where it belonged, but Jenny could still feel the unsettling, gentle brush of his touch. If they turned out the lights in the bowling alley, the imprint would probably glow in the dark. Sheriff Cook seemed to have a radioactive force field. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Really?” His eyes were smiling as he pursed his lips and whistled softly. “No argument or snappy comeback? I’m impressed.”
“Wonderful. Since meeting you, I’ve wanted nothing more to impress you. Haven’t you noticed?” Looking over his shoulder, she saw three blond heads turned curiously in their direction. Something changed in her voice. “You’re holding up the game and you’re delaying my departure. You better get back to your bowling ball.”
He tipped his head sideways, a casual, nonthreatening, good-buddy sort of expression on his face. His taffy-colored hair drifted around his forehead in the smoky, fluorescent lights. “Why?”
“Why?” She gave him a peculiar look. “Because that’s what people do in places like this. They roll bowling balls. Good old-fashioned family fun.” She put an unmistakable emphasis on family.
Amazingly, it didn’t even faze him. “No,” he said patiently, “I meant, why are you leaving? You just got here, and I’m pretty sure you don’t have a date tonight or have plans to wash your hair or something. So why the hurry?”
Jenny couldn’t understand his persistence. His wife and children were within shouting distance and still he smiled with that brilliant, imperturbable gaze fastened on her. “Bowling alleys are kind of tame for a dangerous hell-raiser like myself. Besides, I don’t think your wife and children should be exposed to the criminal element.” There, she thought. Chew on that one for a while, Gladiator.
But instead of flushing, Tyler’s expression went oddly blank. “Who? My what? Oh Lord, don’t wish that on me.” He actually shivered. “She’s my sister. I’m here with my sister. I came along to protect everyone else from those miniature pit bulls of hers. They’re proof positive that big things come in small packages.”
The tight little fist that had been clamped on Jenny’s stomach relaxed a bit. Not his wife, not his children. There went her hopeful perception of him as a two-timing Lothario. He would have been much easier to deal with had his character been less than sterling. Now he was a thoughtful and considerate man who chaperoned his sister and her children to the bowling alley on a Friday night. This was horrible. “Whatever,” she muttered, her cheeks burning bright as she tried to ignore the lazy amusement sparkling in his eyes. “It’s certainly very sheriff-like of you, protecting all these helpless bowlers from those terrifying little boys. I’m surprised you’re not wearing a gun.”
His gaze slowly traveled the length of her, while his damnable, sweetly teasing smile played with his lips. “Who says I’m not wearing my gun? It always pays to be—”
“It’s past my bedtime,” Jenny said abruptly, manufacturing a wide yawn. “Way past. We hell-raisers need a lot of sleep to keep us in tip-top condition. Happy bowling, Sheriff.”
But when she tried once more to leave, he did a quick sidestep and once more prevented her from escaping. The man was very quick on his feet. “I make you nervous, don’t I?”
She stepped to the left; he stepped right along with her. Exasperated, Jenny folded her arms over her chest and threw up her determined little chin, looking him straight in the eyes. “Too much coffee makes me nervous,” she said. “Motorcycles that are possessed by the devil make me nervous. Clogged toilets, split ends and ingrown toenails make me nervous. And that just about covers it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m putting an end to our wonderful conversation.”
But then came a new voice into the wonderful conversation: “Heavens to Betsy, if this doesn’t do my little heart good.”
It was Tyler’s sister, slipping up beside him and tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. She looked like an all-American Thoroughbred, with long legs encased in tight white jeans and a cloud of baby-fine ivory hair pulled away from the sides of her face with tortoiseshell combs. A black-and-white-checkered shirt was tucked into a narrow leather belt, emphasizing the smallest waist Jenny had ever seen. She wore absolutely no makeup at all, just the healthy glow of a sun-kissed complexion. She looked to be no more than eighteen years old, which would have made her—what?—around fifteen years old when she had her children? Saints alive. They seemed to start their families early here in Bridal Veil Falls.
She smiled at Jenny with mischievous blue eyes, the unusual, crystalline color identical to Tyler’s. “Usually Ty has the most predictable effect on women. They make goo-goo eyes and pant and slip him phone numbers, but they never, ever brush him off like you just did. Obviously, you’re a woman to be reckoned with. I’m going to like you.�
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“Rosie’s very shy,” Tyler said. “Can you tell? Go away, Rosie.”
Rosie continued with her breathless chatter, happily oblivious to her brother’s ominous scowl. “He told me he had arrested Julia Roberts this afternoon. Now I see what he meant. You resemble her, you really do.”
“What do I have to do to get rid of you?” Tyler asked his sister. His smile was gone. Completely. “Can’t you just be cooperative for once in your life?”
“I’ve been trying to get rid of you for six years,” Rosie scoffed, dismissing him with an airy hand. “Still you insist on continuing with the overbearing brother routine. I’ve learned from the best, and I will not be ordered around.” She turned back to Jenny with a lavish, approving smile. “Where were we? Oh, yes, Julia Roberts. You really are lovely, really. No wonder Tyler told me he was—”
“Go bowl, Rosie,” Tyler snapped. A light of panic flashed in his blue, blue eyes.
“—going to keep you,” Rosie said brightly.
Three
“Will you look at her go?” Rosie commented innocently, observing Jenny’s rapidly retreating back with limpid blue eyes. “She didn’t even say goodbye. Dear me. Did I say something wrong, Ty?”
“‘Will you look at her go?’” he imitated in a scathing falsetto. “‘Did I say something wrong, Ty?’ Damn it, Rosie, why can’t you mind your own business? You have no idea what I’m up against here.”
Rosie stood on her tiptoes and knuckled the top of his head with her fist. “You’re a big, strapping boy, you can handle it. I have to get back to the terrible two. When you come back, grab the boys a couple of hamburgers from the snack bar.”
“When I come back from where?” Tyler muttered, watching Jenny disappear through the front doors. He’d never seen a woman’s rear end sway with such disdain. She had very fluent body language.