No Ordinary Sheriff

by Mary Sullivan

  “Hi,” he whispered.

  “Austin, right?”

  He nodded and climbed in beside her.

  She scooted to the middle of the seat, her thigh flush against Cash’s.

  When he buckled his seat belt he had to squeeze his fingers between his own hip and hers. The drive to Ordinary would be only twenty minutes. Thank God. He hated that he found her hot.

  When he pulled his hand out from between them, she shivered. It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t reacting to his touch. She was cold. Frozen. Her own fault.

  “Where’s your jacket?”

  “In the bar.”

  Cash studied the bikers being herded out of Sassy’s and decided he’d had enough of the place for one night.

  He should have thought to give her his coat before he tossed it into the back. She might be dressed like a slut, but she was still Janey’s sister and should be treated with respect. He retrieved his jacket and covered her with it. It engulfed her.

  She hesitated and then smiled. “Thanks.”

  He noticed Austin shivering, too, and turned up the heat as he drove. His hand brushed Shannon’s bare thigh. She pulled away.

  “You want some of this coat?” she asked Austin.

  In the dark cab, despite the bad mood his attraction to her put him into, Cash almost smiled. Like Austin was going to say no. He felt more than saw Austin pull the coat over both of them, making sure she was covered. Treating her like a lady despite her clothes.

  When they finally arrived in Ordinary, in silence, Cash pulled up in front of Austin’s trailer.

  “Don’t forget the groceries in the back,” he said.

  “’Kay,” Austin mumbled. “Thanks.”

  Cash waited until he was safely inside before driving away.

  “You’ve got a good job. Why does your brother live in a rundown trailer?”

  “I’m not a relative. I volunteer as his Big Brother.”

  “Oh.” She scooted across the seat and leaned against the passenger door.

  She didn’t smell like vanilla tonight. Some kind of heavy cheap perfume scented the cab and he hated it. He’d smelled it on his dad too often, transferred from some woman he’d been sleeping with.

  Cash remembered walking down O’Farrell Street in San Francisco looking for his dad. Dad used to patrol the Tenderloin before he became Commissioner. Cash was only fourteen. He’d never been in the area. It was Dad’s old beat, but Cash knew Dad still came down here on his nights off.

  Cash found him in a back alley behind a strip club with a hooker’s legs wrapped around his waist. He was banging her against a brick wall.

  “Dad.”

  His father looked up from the woman and said, “Cash.” He’d shaken his head to clear the lust. “What are you doing here?”

  “Mom’s real sick. You need to take her to the hospital.”

  He’d dropped the woman like a hot potato. Cash had turned his back while Dad straightened himself. Dad had walked away without paying. Cash knew cops got things for free. Coffee and doughnuts, too.

  He hated that Shannon’s perfume brought back those memories, raised ugly emotions like disgust and anger.

  The air sizzled in the cab of the pickup. Cash tried to hold on to his temper, honest to God he did, but this was going to kill C.J. and Janey.

  “What were you thinking going to Sassy’s dressed like that?” he barked. “What would Janey think? And C.J.?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Do you have a death wish?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “You could have been killed. Raped. Drugged and date raped. Gang raped.”

  “I was careful.”

  “Careful? You call dressing like that being careful?”

  He felt her watching him in the dark interior of the truck and turned to her. In the light of the dashboard, with the inch-thick makeup on her face and the heavy black mascara hiding those eyes, he didn’t recognize her as the same woman he’d met at C.J.’s house last night or in the candy store this morning.

  “My clothes are not your concern,” Shannon said, as though there’d been no break in the conversation.

  “The hell they’re not,” he all but shouted as he pulled into the Wright yard. “Janey’s my friend. C.J.’s my best pal. They wouldn’t want to see you hurt. What kind of woman are you anyway?”

  Shannon sighed and it sounded like it came up from her toes. “That’s none of your business.”

  In the Wright yard, Cash slammed on the brakes.

  “I’m making you my business.”

  The woman glared back at him. No regret. No contrition. He unbuckled his seatbelt and heard it hit the window before he jumped out.

  He strode around the front of the truck and opened her door. Grabbing her arm, he hauled her out and slammed her door.

  He didn’t wait for her to gain her balance before tugging her toward the house.

  “Stop manhandling me,” she yelled.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MOONLIGHT FELL across Shannon and she looked like something out of a black-and-white horror movie, defiant and eerily beautiful in her cheap get-up. Cash stopped to pull himself under control. She was right. She was none of his business and he had no right to be physical with her.

  He took her elbow, gently, and directed her into the house with a lot less force. He headed straight to the kitchen where he turned on the overhead light and hunted through the drawers until he found a knife sharp enough to cut through plastic. A second later, he’d set Shannon’s wrists free.

  She rubbed her abraded skin.

  He couldn’t stand to look at her like this.

  “Go get changed. I’ll make tea.”

  She left the room and he could breathe again. His attraction to her in this incarnation was too raw, too insanely sexual on a level deeper and faster than thought and reason, when all he wanted in life was to rise above his father’s rotten choices.

  He knew he wasn’t his dad, but neither was he immune to this woman.

  Tonight the recycle box held two more cans of pasta and sauce. Cash had always wondered what parts of the animal the ground beef in those meals came from. The woman had a terrible diet. Good thing she was a jogger.

  Ten minutes later, Shannon returned in a pair of gray sweats tucked into thick socks and a white cable-knit turtleneck. The sleeves covered her hands and she tucked her arms across her midriff as though still cold.

  “Here. Sit.” He put a cup of tea on the table then poured one for himself. When he turned back, she sat at the table cupping her hands around her warm mug.

  She’d brushed out whatever product she’d put in her hair to make it trashy, but the remnants of that crap made her hair look darker than this morning’s blond silk. She had it pulled back into a ponytail.

  She’d stripped her face of every trace of makeup. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were so pale they were almost white. Here was the woman he’d met in the candy shop this morning.

  He leaned back against the counter and sipped his tea. “You weren’t there to pick up a man. You were investigating, looking for drugs, weren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No ‘maybe.’ I told you to stay out of it unless you want to come here as a professional.”

  “I am a professional.”

  “You’re not on the clock. What you did was dangerous.”

  “I had my gun. I checked the area out first and saw that the cops were close.” She visibly forced herself to relax. “I sat near the back door so I could escape easily. I didn’t drink a thing any of the bikers bought for me.”

  “Then how did you get caught in the fight?”

  “It was over me. More than one of them wanted to take me home. Before I knew
it, punches were being thrown. Before I could leave, my hair got caught in someone’s fist. I got dragged down with him.”

  For the first time Cash noticed the red mark on her forehead. Cripes, she was hurt.

  She waved her hand. “It’s nothing. Just a slight headache.”

  “You’re too pretty to go into bars dressed like a hooker.”

  “But it almost worked. One of the guys who wanted to take me home was taking me to the farm for meth.”

  “Really? Meth, for sure?”

  “He said he had some at home.”

  “You don’t think he was lying to get you to his place?”

  “I’d swear he was telling the truth. None of those bikers were surprised when I asked for glass.”

  “Good work. So we know it’s on the biker farm, we just don’t know whether it’s being manufactured there.”

  “If the farm is as remote as I’ve heard, it would be the perfect spot for it.”

  “Yeah. I want you staying away from it, though. You should have never gone to that bar alone tonight.”

  “Cash, you don’t know what my job calls for. You’ve lived in this small town too long. I’ve had experience with this kind of thing before.”

  “Going into bars, dressed like that?”

  “When I have to.”

  There was that ambition, that willingness to do whatever it took to get ahead, even if it got her into trouble. It was bad enough when his dad had done it, but a woman?

  How could a man live with a woman like that, wait for her to come home every night, wondering whether she would be whole or damaged? Would he be waiting for the call a cop’s spouse dreaded?

  She was right about one thing. She had more experience than he did. He didn’t deal with this stuff in Ordinary.

  He didn’t think he was a chauvinist, but was it right for a woman to be doing a job so dangerous?

  It turned his stomach to ice.

  “Why’d you take a swing at Sheriff Gage?”

  “It was part of the act.”

  “You need to keep out of this,” he said.

  “I can’t. Would you if it were your brother in a coma?”

  He thought of his half brother, Jamie. Although the kid was spoiled and sullen, Cash loved him. No way he would leave it alone. He wasn’t telling Shannon that, though.

  “Don’t go back there.”

  “It’s the only lead I have.”

  Brad came to mind. “I’ve got a possible lead.” He still couldn’t believe it, though, even if he was going to investigate. “Well, it’s just an idea.”

  She perked up. “What idea?”

  He shot her a quelling glance. “None of your business.”

  She bristled, but stopped her questioning.

  He put his empty mug into the sink, then she walked him to the front door. “I need to get my car from Sassy’s.”

  “I’ll drive you out in the morning after I take care of C.J.’s horses.”

  He stood in the doorway for a long time, staring at her, hesitating to leave. He wanted to do something with this too-capable woman, like curling her into his arms and kissing the recklessness out of her, turning her soft and pliable and ready to listen to him when he told her not to go to bars alone at night dressed as a hooker.

  Instead, he strode out into the night, to the predictability of his empty house and his well-defined life.

  * * *

  CASH ARRIVED BACK at the Wright ranch early the following morning. No lights shone in the house.

  Was she was still in bed? He shook his head to rid it of images that thought called to mind.

  He walked past the corrals to the stable across the backyard. In the early-morning stillness, the door hinges complained when he forced them open.

  The air inside the stable smelled of hay and horses. The horses heated their stalls. Their breath fogged in the chill air.

  His own horse, Victor, sang out his usual morning refrain of “where’s breakfast?”

  Cash had had trouble sleeping last night, lying awake trying to figure out how to convince Shannon to stay away from those bikers. She wasn’t stupid but the woman was driven. She’d get herself in serious danger.

  His work with the horses, this ordered routine, these familiar scents, soothed his jitters.

  When the horses finished eating, he brought C.J.’s three out to the corral. They danced in the sunlight, frisky. Then he walked Victor out of the stable to join them.

  The mutt he’d awakened in the stable trotted across the yard, mounted the steps of the porch and scratched at the back door.

  A minute later, the door opened and Shannon peeked out, her hair a rumpled blond halo.

  “Hey, you,” she said to the dog. Her morning-husky voice stroked Cash’s libido. “Wait here.”

  The dog waited, either well-trained, or intelligent enough to understand her. He whimpered and shifted on his paws, but stayed put on the top step.

  She reappeared with a bowl full of who knew what, which she put on the floor. The dog attacked it ravenously, pushing the bowl against the doorsill so she couldn’t close the door.

  She nudged the bowl back toward the dog with her bare toes and kept her foot there to hold it still while the animal ate.

  She wore nothing but an oversize t-shirt. Her legs were bare. And long. And perfect. The breath streaming from Cash’s lungs hissed out of his mouth.

  She glanced up, startled, and stared at him.

  Victor stamped the semi-frozen ground with one hoof and Cash pushed him into the corral. He closed the gate then approached the house.

  “His name’s Bandit,” he said, referring to the dog. “Don’t leave a speck of food around. He’ll steal it.”

  “I didn’t know C.J. and Janey owned a dog.”

  “They don’t. He comes over from the neighbor’s land. The kids have probably encouraged him by feeding him.”

  Shannon hopped from one foot to the other. “So that’s why I couldn’t find dog food in the kitchen. I opened a tin of tuna.”

  She wrapped her arms across her midriff, cupping her elbows against the cold, and the action plumped her breasts. Cash stared at a point behind her left shoulder.

  He gestured toward the stable. “I need to clean out the stalls and then we can head out to get your car.”

  A pair of high beams strained against her t-shirt. Oh, Lordy.

  “Did you already have breakfast?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” A bowl of cold cereal, but no way was he going into that house, that kitchen, with Shannon this morning.

  She shifted to her other foot. Pink nail polish twinkled on her toes. A blush stained her cheeks. “I can be ready in half an hour.”

  She slipped back into the house and closed the door. Thank God. He couldn’t have stood to look at her much longer without touching her. That date with Danielle couldn’t come soon enough.

  * * *

  HER EYES WERE gritty. She’d had trouble sleeping. She never slept easily after undercover work. Last night had been worse than usual, though, and it was Cash’s fault. For too many dark and restless hours she’d thought about the way he’d looked at her in her slut clothes.

  He’d practically scorched her with his eyes. He’d wanted her.

  The timing couldn’t be any more inconvenient for this attraction. Who was she kidding? There would never be a convenient time. Her career mattered more to her than relationships. Than men.

  She knew from experience how men disappointed a woman. How women always saved the day. How much stronger they were than men and how much it took to overcome the violence that men dished out too easily.

  Even so, Cash drew her. He’d been rough with her last night, but the second she’d told him to stop manhandling her, he had.
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  He’d gentled his touch, had made tea, had seemed even tender at moments.

  That tenderness was more dangerous to her than his violence. She knew how to fight violence. Tenderness, though? It left her vulnerable. Uncertain.

  Because she knew what she wanted in life, she fought that uncertainty. She couldn’t let Cash mean anything to her.

  After she’d finished breakfast, showered and dressed, she stepped outside. Cash was still working in the barn so she leaned against his truck and absorbed the sunlight.

  She felt dirty this morning, as though she’d somehow taken on the grime the bikers lived in. The sunlight was healing, the cool breeze cleansing. She breathed deeply to clear her lungs of last night’s filth.

  Cash left the barn and strode to the pickup. A big, capable man, his steps were sure and confident. The sun did interesting things to his dirty-blond hair, sparked it with golden highlights.

  When he got closer, the sun turned his blue eyes to brilliant gems.

  Hell’s bells, the man was too attractive.

  * * *

  CASH DROVE SHANNON to Sassy’s. She’d dressed in jeans, a sweater and a jacket, and didn’t look anything like the woman he’d driven home last night.

  They pulled into the parking lot.

  “Sure looks tawdry in the light of day, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “These places usually do.”

  “Yeah. It looks harmless enough. How does Mike Gage feel about having this place in his jurisdiction?”

  “Hates it. Monroe’s not a bad town, a little on the tough side, but nothing Gage and his police force can’t handle. But those bikers…they’re a whole other breed altogether, and Mike’s getting tired of spending his weekends here breaking up fights.”

  “I don’t blame him.” She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and it glistened like spun gold.

  His stomach clenched. “Don’t go there tonight.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Shannon.” His voice turned hard.

  She turned away from staring at the front of the bar to look at him, her eyes bright pools of green.

  “I can take care of myself, Cash. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

  “You’re not that old. You’re what? Twenty-six?”