A Sheriff in Tennessee

by Lori Handeland

  Because while beauty might be skin deep, ugliness went a whole lot further. All the way to a man’s soul, making him wish for everything, hope for nothing, and know in his heart that no matter who he might want, she would never want him in the same way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BY THE TIME Belle had finished thanking Serafina for the wonderful meal and convinced the woman she did not need a doggie bag for the garlic bread and she really, really did not need a midnight snack of linguine, the mayor had finished chatting with Klein and disappeared.

  Just what she’d been waiting for.

  She extricated herself from Serafina’s attention by promising to return and eat again on an unspecified day in the future, then hustled across the room toward Klein.

  He lifted his head, and she could tell something had changed. Belle slowed her pace so quickly she nearly stumbled. Was he upset that the mayor had already heard about their holding hands? But Klein had warned her such a thing was bound to happen. She hadn’t cared, and he hadn’t seemed to. So what was the matter with him now?

  “Did Virgil call?” she asked. “Is there an emergency? Do we have to go?”

  “Not we. Me. I have to go. But I’ll walk you home first.”

  “I’m supposed to be your shadow, remember?”

  “Not for this. It’s routine. Let’s go.” He opened the door, waving absently when Serafina shouted “Ciao!”

  The streets of Pleasant Ridge had become deserted. As Belle and Klein walked, the silver-blue light of the moon warred with the flickering, colorful images of televisions and the muted golds of lamplight. The spring chill in the air brushed Belle’s shoulders, and momentarily she wished for a sweater, until a better idea for warmth came to mind.

  She shifted the evil pan of brownies to her left hip and reached for Klein’s hand with her free one. He eluded her by snatching the brownies from her grip and clutching them with both hands.

  “I’ll take those,” he said unnecessarily, then set a brisk pace in the direction of the five-and-dime.

  “Please do. Take them home. Take them to the station. Take them far away from me.”

  His answer was a long, slow frown. Oops, too desperate. Belle needed to be more careful of what she said and did around Gabe Klein, or soon she’d be interrogated about more than she cared to be.

  “You don’t have to walk me home,” she blurted. “You’re obviously in a hurry to get back to work, and it’s not like the streets around here aren’t safe for high-fashion models.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Just don’t talk to strangers. Don’t go out alone at night. Keep your doors locked. You know the drill.”

  “Doors locked? I thought that was an insult.”

  “Insult me. I can take it.”

  He might be able to take it, but what he couldn’t seem to do was look at her. Hmm. “What did the mayor say to you?”

  Klein tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, although when Belle turned around, she saw there was no crack in the sidewalk. When she glanced back at him, he kept on walking. She had to hurry to catch up. He didn’t answer her question, so she kept talking.

  “He asked me out.”

  “I heard.”

  Aha. From past experience she deduced the mayor had warned Klein away from her. But why would Klein listen?

  Honestly. Men were such…men.

  “I said no.”

  He didn’t even look at her. “You said later.”

  “That’s what he heard.” Belle shrugged. “To be honest, that’s what I wanted him to hear. I can’t afford to alienate the mayor. I don’t need him causing trouble.” She stared at Klein’s stony profile. “But I can see that he already has.”

  They reached the back steps of her apartment, and she put her hand on Klein’s wrist before he could run away. His pulse thudded beneath her fingertips, steady and sure like the man, and she couldn’t help herself; she let her hand stay there because she liked touching him, and right now he was letting her.

  “He told you to stay away from me, didn’t he?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly?”

  “He told me to keep all the other men away.”

  Her mouth fell open. This was worse than she’d thought. “Of all the nerve! Who does he think he is?”

  “Your future husband?”

  “Has he always been delusional?”

  At last Klein looked at her, and either it was a trick of the moon or she caught a flash of the humor she liked so much in the depths of his stunning blue eyes. “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe you’d better keep him away from me.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same thing.”

  “My hero.”

  Despite the teasing lilt in her voice, he stiffened and backed away, pulling his wrist from beneath her fingers, removing her latest weakness—a sudden craving for his warmth and strength—from her reach.

  The humor was gone from his eyes, if it had ever been there at all. Instead, he gazed at her without expression, once again the stoic cop she so wanted to emulate.

  “I’m no hero,” he said softly.

  “I don’t agree.”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “You do a lot more than just the job. I haven’t been here long, and I can already see that you go above and beyond, every minute of the day.”

  “That’s the job.”

  “A lot of men wouldn’t think so. They’d take the easy way out. They wouldn’t bother to warn me that their boss is a stalker in training. That might cause too much trouble for them.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe it. You’d be surprised at how many people believe that because of how I look or how I earn my living, I deserve whatever hassles might come my way.”

  He scowled. “They’re idiots.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me. But I’d still be on my own.”

  “You won’t be on your own here.”

  “I know.” She stared up at the bright, shiny moon and took a deep breath of fresh, cool night air. Funny, but Pleasant Ridge smelled just like home. “As handsome as the mayor is, as suave as he thinks he is, there’s one thing that determines I’ll never be in his presence for longer than I absolutely have to be.”

  His shoes scraped the pavement as he moved near her once more. “What’s that?”

  “He makes me feel like less.” She lowered her gaze from the sky to his face. “But you…” She inched closer, too. “You make me feel like more.”

  Grateful for that, she went up on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his cheek. She’d planned on just a quick, friendly, thank-you kiss. But the proximity to that chest, his heat, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, the taste of him on her lips made her freeze as a need for so much more washed over her. Her mouth lingered, brushing his jaw on the way back down.

  Then she was staring at his suntanned neck, the smooth hollow of his throat, the pulse that beat hard and fast just beneath his ear. If she dragged her teeth over that pulse, would he come upstairs and make her forget the mayor, the accident, even the lasagna for an hour or two?

  “Isabelle.”

  His voice, gentle and soft, trilled along her skin like a breeze. Hope fluttered in her heart, even as desire flared in her belly. Cool against hot, they mixed somewhere in between, and she swayed toward him. He shifted and raised one palm to cup her bare shoulder. The chill of the night dissipated as the heat of him called to the need in her.

  Would he gather her close, hold her tight? Anticipation made her shiver. She caught her breath and tilted her head so she could see his face.

  Concern etched his brow; kindness flickered in his eyes. “You have to get some rest.”

  The truth came to her as clear as the stars in the sky above. His hand was not caressing but comforting, not pulling her nearer but keeping her steady. In his gaze she saw no reflection of her desire, no interest
in her at all.

  Belle’s cheeks heated, and she backed away. His fingers did not cling; they released her with ease. He was being her friend as she’d asked him to be—nothing more.

  She’d kissed him, her mouth trailing along his skin, heart thudding, pulse skipping, desire spiking, and he’d stood there, one hand holding her at bay, the other holding the pan of brownies, no doubt waiting for her to finish drooling on him. Belle and Clint had more in common than she cared to admit.

  Talk about feeling like less instead of more. Her lack of control where Gabriel Klein was concerned could become a problem if she let it. But if there was one thing Isabelle Ash knew, it was how to regain control—of both her mind and her body.

  “You’re right.” Her voice sounded indifferent to what had just happened, though she was anything but. “I am tired.”

  “You should be. Here—” He held out the brownies.

  There was no way she was taking those upstairs, where they could call her name all night long.

  “You keep them.” Belle fled, pounding up the steps without a backward glance.

  “But—”

  “Good night.” She opened the door.

  “Tomorrow at noon,” he called. “The station.”

  Her answer was an absentminded wave before she shut and locked the door behind her. No time to chat. Belle had a date with her neurosis.

  KLEIN STARED AT THE DOOR for a long time after Belle slammed and locked it. There was a tickle in his brain that usually signified the answer to a pressing question, if only he could focus.

  Unfortunately, he had no idea what the question was, and he couldn’t focus worth a damn right now on anything other than her lips against his jaw and her breath along his neck.

  He gripped the pan of brownies and fought the urge to run upstairs, pound on the door, grab her and kiss her until her body throbbed the way his did.

  Klein cursed and turned away. If it wasn’t for his rich fantasy life, he’d have no life at all.

  He skirted the five-and-dime, emerging on Longstreet Avenue. He should go directly back to the station, give Virgil the brownies, then take Clint home. But he made the mistake of glancing up, and then he was no longer moving but staring.

  Her lights were on. He could see her shadow moving back and forth behind the curtains. She wasn’t sleeping. What was she doing?

  He had no idea, but since he was an inquisitive man, he leaned against the lamppost and watched awhile.

  You make me feel like more, she’d said.

  Those words had him as curious as the odd movements that continued unabated in the upstairs apartment.

  He had learned early on that allowing other people to affect how he felt about himself was asking to feel pretty bad for a whole lot of his life. He’d been about to tell her that when she’d kissed him, and he’d lost any trace of a brain.

  Her mouth was soft, her breath sweet. He’d been unable to keep himself from touching her skin. Thank God for Lucinda’s brownies, which had kept one of his hands off Isabelle. If he hadn’t been holding them he might have grabbed her with both massive paws and scared her to death.

  As it was, she must have sensed how he burned for more, because she’d held very still and stared at his neck, no doubt terrified to meet his eyes and give him ready access to her lips. By the time she had, he’d regained his control.

  Klein was adept at hiding what he felt. Being laughed at enough times would do that for a man. The kiss had been about gratitude; he’d known that all along. But tell it to his body. Ever since Kay Lynne had betrayed him, beautiful women had turned Klein cold. Why, then, did Isabelle make him hot?

  Because when he looked at her, he didn’t see Isabelle Ash anymore; he saw Izzy—the vulnerable, uncertain girl who lurked in her eyes—and he wanted to help her, protect her, heal her.

  Klein frowned. Heal her? Where had he gotten the idea she needed to be healed?

  He focused again on her window, contemplated the shadow that continued to move this way and that. Vulnerable and uncertain did not describe Isabelle Ash. She never could have gotten where she was in her business by being either. But Klein knew what vulnerability and uncertainty looked like. He saw them often enough in the mirror.

  Which was no doubt why he felt the need to heal her. Because deep down he wanted to be healed, too.

  Klein snorted. There was nothing wrong with him, just as there was nothing wrong with her, and the sooner he stopped trying to be her hero, the better off he would be. Delusions of knighthood always got him into trouble.

  He’d just begun to stroll toward the station, when his walkie-talkie sent out a burst of static that almost made him drop the brownies. Cradling them against his hip, he answered the call.

  “Chief, you better get in here. We got trouble.”

  “What now?”

  The sound of crying—wailing, actually—came through the walkie-talkie along with Virgil’s voice. “Just come. Quick.”

  “On my way.”

  As he returned the walkie-talkie to his belt, Isabelle’s window slid open. He glanced up to see if she was watching him, but she was still moving back and forth behind the curtains.

  The beat of drums, fast and furious, followed him down the street. He still couldn’t figure out what she was doing up there, and he no longer had the time to wonder. Duty called.

  AN HOUR AND A HALF of aerobics did amazing things for Belle’s state of mind and body. The leaden weight of the lasagna in her belly, while not gone, had diminished, and the pulsing, pounding beat of desire in her blood had ceded to the pounding of her pulse.

  Her ability to exert control over her body in another way had overridden the lack of control she felt over her body whenever she was near Gabe Klein. In years past she might have resorted to the customary bulimic tricks. But she was better now.

  Simply put, she’d exercised until she was light-headed enough not to care about much and sweaty enough to feel as if she’d done something worthwhile. The old runner’s high worked just as well when it was a dancer’s high, instead.

  Of course, being Belle, she wanted to keep going. Was tempted to start the CD all over again and exercise until she dropped. Tempted, but not insane.

  She’d learned over the years that the inner mechanism that told most people when enough was enough didn’t work quite as well for her. Her logic was often skewed. If eating vegetables was healthy, then eating only vegetables was better. If running a mile was good, well then, running twenty had to be damn near orgasmic.

  So even though the voice in her head was saying, If you feel great now, imagine how you’d feel if you did the same thing twice, she knew better than to listen to it.

  Instead, she took a tepid shower, put on a nightgown, pulled her bed out of the wall and crawled in. Then she lay there wide-awake, remembering the taste of Klein’s skin and aching for the touch of his hands.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MEANWHILE, back at the station, disaster awaited the unwary sheriff.

  The voice in Klein’s head, which sounded suspiciously like the narrator from a George of the Jungle cartoon, signaled imminent exhaustion. Too bad he didn’t have the time.

  “I don’t know where my baby went,” Miss Dubray wailed for the tenth time in the past hour. “That’s what I want you to find out.”

  “What was he wearing at the time of his disappearance, ma’am?”

  Klein shot Virgil a dirty look, but the deputy was focused on the sniffling woman in their visitor’s chair.

  “Um, let me think.” She dabbed her eyes with a linen-and-lace handkerchief. “The last time I saw him he had on his sailor suit. With the blue captain’s hat.” She smiled at Virgil through her tears. “Does that help?”

  “Yep. Now I know why he ran off.”

  Her mouth trembled and she glanced at Klein, who barely managed to keep from cursing. As usual, Virgil’s victim-side manner left a lot to be desired.

  “Virgil, quick, go see if you can find him around town.”


  “If I were him, I’d be in Knoxville by now. Naked.”

  A choked sob came from Miss Dubray. Clint, who had been sniffing her shoes unmercifully ever since Klein returned, and probably before that, too, lifted his head and howled.

  Klein’s patience snapped. “Quiet!”

  Miss Dubray jumped and clamped her mouth shut. Virgil grumbled and slammed out the door. Clint dropped his head between his paws for an instant, then stretched his neck out until his nose touched Miss Dubray’s toe.

  Klein rubbed his eyes. What he really wanted to do was go home and get some sleep. Maybe dream some more about Isabelle. A man had to have a hobby. But he was going to be stuck here, or maybe out there in the dark, searching for an AWOL Chihuahua all night long. Sometimes duty sucked.

  He dropped his hand. “Does T.B. have a license?”

  “No, Sheriff, he’s too young to drive.”

  For a moment, Klein just stared, waiting for her to smile or even wink. When she didn’t, merely contemplated him with damp eyes and a serious expression, he resisted the urge to bang his head against the desk. He went on to the next question.

  “How about a tag with his name and your number?”

  Her brow creased. “But everyone in Pleasant Ridge knows him. Why would he need that?”

  “In case—”

  Klein snapped his own mouth shut. There was no reason to get Miss Dubray any more upset than she already was, by mentioning that T.B. could have wandered out of town where no one knew him. Because out of town there were all sorts of things that wouldn’t be reading his tag. They’d be spitting it out after they ate him.

  “Why don’t you just go on home and get some rest. We’ll bring T.B. by as soon as we find him.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t sleep. Not without T.B. right next to me.”

  Clint grumbled and stood up, fixing Klein with a reproachful stare. Klein never let him sleep on the bed.

  “Well, you can at least go home and try to relax.” Klein came around the desk and helped Miss Dubray to her feet. “I’m sure Virgil will find T.B. directly, and I’ll send them both to your place.”