by Linda Turner
The minute she filled out a loan application and looked at the pitiful numbers she put down for income, she knew she was in trouble.
The loan officer, a starched and pressed middle-aged woman who introduced herself only as Mrs. Franklin, took one look at those same numbers after Becca explained what she needed the money for and could offer little encouragement.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Prescott, but I don't think I'm going to be able to get this approved at this time. Since your job with the school is only part-time, you just don't make enough to qualify for an unsecured loan of this amount."
Seated on the edge of her seat, Becca felt her heart sink all the way to her knees.
"What about a secured loan? I could put up the property" — Mrs. Franklin, all-business up until then, pulled off her bifocals and leaned back in her chair to give Becca a sympathetic, motherly smile.
"You don't want to do that, honey. Your home would still be at risk because you wouldn't be able to make the payments. Instead of losing it to the county, you'd be losing it to the bank and ruining your credit at the same time."
"But I've got to do something. The county's only giving me thirty days!"
"Call Charlene Erskine at the tax office and talk to her," the older woman suggested.
"The county doesn't want to take your home any more than you want them to. If you could come up with some kind of payment' anything—Charlene might be willing to work out a payment schedule with you.
That will at least buy you some time .... Becca frowned, seeing little point in putting off the inevitable.
"What good will that do? You just said I couldn't afford to make the payments."
"Now," Mrs. Franklin stressed with a slow smile.
"But your circumstances are about to change, aren't they?"
"Change?"
"The election, dear," she said with a laugh.
"If you can buy some time, I'm sure I'll have no trouble getting your loan approved after you're elected."
Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if the outcome of the election was a sure thing. Surprised, Becca stared at her.
Margaret and the others had talked of her winning the election in just that tone of voice, but they supported her because they loved her like family. This woman had never laid eyes on her before, yet she still gave her better than even odds to win.
Elated, Becca wanted to grab onto her prediction like a parachutist grasping at a rip cord, but common sense forced her to say, "That sounds good, but there are no guarantees in an election. And Sheriff Whitaker is the incumbent. Beating him is not going to be easy."
"It will be if he keeps giving interviews like the one in this morning's paper."
At Becca's blank look, the older woman gasped, "You mean you haven't seen it? Good Lord, girl, why didn't you say so? I've got it right here." Reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled out a slightly tattered copy of the morning paper and handed it across the desk.
"I couldn't believe it when I read it," she confided.
"Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! I thought Riley Whitaker had more sense. Every woman in the county is going to be up in arms after seeing that—just you wait."
"That" turned out to be an in-depth interview with Sydney O'Keefe that was prominently displayed on the front page. Scanning it quickly, Becca saw nothing out of the ordinary, just a few subtle references to his days with the DEA, with most of the article focusing on the years he'd been the Hidalgo County Sheriff until she got to the end.
The people of Hidalgo County know me. They know what I'm capable of.
They know they can trust me to protect them. They can't say the same about Becca Prescott, however. She's an outsider, a stranger. And a woman—a small woman. She might have a degree in criminology, but that's not going to help her when she has to arrest some thug who outweighs her by fifty or sixty pounds. She's just not physically fit to do the job.
The words seemed to slap Becca in the face.
Taken aback," she stared at them, her jaw slowly clenching until it was locked tight. Not physically fit to do the job. A stranger. not physically fit. The criticism rolled around in her head, like the churning waves of a stormy ocean breaking on a rocky beach.
How dare he!
Mrs. Franklin saw the fire flash in her eyes and nodded, understanding perfectly.
"I know, dear. That's just how I felt when I read it. So... what are you going to do about it?"
"Do?" Becca fumed, stuffing the offending paper into her oversize purse.
"I'm going to show him just how much damage this small woman can do to his very large body! Then we'll see who's physically fit for the job."
Seated in the last booth at the City Diner, his back to the wall and his face toward the entrance of the long, narrow room, Riley frowned down at the eggs he'd been served only seconds before. They looked like they'd just been cracked from their shells, and he knew they couldn't have spent more than a second or two in a frying pan.
And while he didn't consider himself a picky man when it came to food, even he had his limits.
Motioning for the waitress, he threw her a teasing grin as she moved to his side.
"Hey, Wanda, what's wrong with Tootsie? She have another fight with Fred or what? These eggs are raw."
Expecting a wisecrack and the flirtatious smile that Wanda had served him with his breakfast for the last five years, he nearly dropped his jaw when she gave him a scowl instead and snatched the plate of eggs from under his nose.
"If you think you can do any better, you're welcome to try," she hulled and stalked off without another word.
"Well, hell," Riley muttered, staring after her in confusion. What was she so bent out of shape about? In all the years he'd known her, she'd never once snapped at him, let alone bitten his head off. What had he said?
Puzzled, he watched her move across the diner, topping off coffee at each booth, chatting easily with the customers, just as she did every morning.
If she was upset about something, there was no sign of it.
Maybe he was just being touchy, he decided, frowning.
Considering the morning he'd had, it wouldn't be any wonder. A tractor-trailer rig had jackknifed on the highway at four in the morning, scattering frozen turkeys for a haft a mile.
Dartel Gabriel, one of his more experienced deputies, could have handled that by himself, but not the three other accidents the disaster later caused. So only four hours after he'd gone off duty, Riley had been dragged out of bed to take charge. This was the first chance he'd had to sit down since.
Pushing his mug toward the edge of the table, he patiently waited his turn for coffee. But when Wanda reached the booth next to his, she started to turn away without sparing him a glance.
"Hey!" he called after her in surprise.
"What about me?"
Considering her mood, he half expected her to ignore him, but she turned back and set the whole pot on his table with a thump.
"Pour it yourself," she said with a smile that was too tight to be anything but forced.
"You can probably do it better than me, anyway. You're a big, strong man."
Riley couldn't have been more stunned if she'd hauled off and slapped him. Giving him one last, hostile glare, she stalked off, leaving behind a silence that stretched to the farthest corners of the diner.
Heat crawling into his face, he glanced up and only then noticed that he was getting similar sour looks from every woman in the place.
What the devil was going on?
He almost strode into the kitchen then and there to demand an explanation, but Wanda was back almost immediately with his eggs. This time they were closer to burned than raw, but he didn't spare them a glance.
Grabbing the waitress's plumb wrist before she could turn away, he growled, "All right, Wanda, you made your point. You're madder than a wet hen about something. You want to tell me what it is, or do I have to guess?"
Surprisingly, she laughed, but there was nothing
humorous about the sharp, strangled sound.
"I would have never figured you for dense, Riley Whitaker. But then again, I guess I don't know you at all, do I? If anyone had told me before this morning that you were a chauvinist pig, I would have said he was a damn liar."
"A chauvinist?" Riley echoed, his dark brows snapping together into an intimidating ridge.
"Dammit, woman, what are you talking about? I'm no sexist and you know it."
"Oh, really? Then how do you explain this?" Jerking free of his hold, she scooped up a copy of the daily Gazette from the long bar that separated the kitchen from the dining area.
She slapped it down in front of him, barely missing the plate of eggs he hurriedly pushed out of the way.
Glancing at the morning paper, Riley looked back up at her with a frown. "what? My interview with Sydney? What about it? "
"Read it," she insisted.
"Then I dare you to look me in the eye and say what about it." He didn't need to read it—he was the one who'd given Sydney the information, for Pete's sake! But Wanda looked ready to throttle him, so with a shrug, he did as she asked.
Quickly checking the accuracy of the background information, he couldn't for the life of him see what she was so steamed up about. He'd never denied that he'd worked for the DEA, though the details of his years with the agency weren't something he talked about with anyone.
That didn't make him a chauvinist pig.
Then the focus of the article turned to Becca Prescott and his opinion of her.
"They know they can trust me to protect them. They can't say the same about Becca Prescott however. She's an outsider And a woman .... The last three words, printed in italics, appeared to be an out-and-out accusation, and a fault that couldn't be overlooked.
Or tolerated in a sheriff.
His teeth clamped on an oath, Riley crumpled the paper in his fist, trying to remember just what he'd said to Sydney. There had been some mention of women not being physically fit for law enforcement, but he hadn't meant to imply that women as a sex were inferior. No wonder every female in the place was looking at him as if he'd just crawled out from under a slimy rock.
Sydney had made him sound like a puffed-up jackass who had nothing but disdain for anything in skirts, when nothing could have been further from the truth. Hell, he liked women. He just didn't want one backing him up.
She'd go for the knees, Becca decided. Or a karate chop across the bread basket. Yeah, that would do it. She'd teach the burn to mess with her. Not physically fit to do the job, was she? Like hell! She might not be a giant, but when she wanted to, she could make a man beg for mercy. And Riley Whitaker's time was coming. The dog! It was no more than he deserved.
Stiffly thanking Mrs. Franklin for all her help, she hurried outside, intending to storm right over to the sheriff's office and confront Riley then and there. But the sturdy front door of the bank had hardly closed behind her when she spied a tan patrol car parked across the street in front of the City Diner. All the deputies drove similar vehicles, but only one had Sheriff painted underneath the county emblem on the doors.
Nor all of ten seconds, she hesitated. What she had to say to him would be better off said in private. Somewhere in the normally logical part of her mind, she knew that. But she was steamed up and not thinking all that clearly. Throwing caution to the wind, she darted across the street.
The minute she stepped through the diner's front door, conversations stopped in mid-sentence and silence rolled through the place like a tidal wave, engulfing everyone in its path.
Becca never noticed. Spotting Riley almost immediately at the far end of the row of booths, she made a beeline for him and didn't care who was watching.
"I want to talk to you, Sheriff."
Caught in the act of pushing his barely tasted eggs away, glanced up, only to groan at the sight of Becca Prescott sliding into the empty seat directly across the table from him. Why hadn't he had the sense to forget breakfast and go back to his office the minute he saw the damn paper?
Now he was going to have to explain himself in public, and one look at the lady's furious expression told him it wasn't going to be pretty.
Her eyes, sharp as new barbed wire, pinned him to his seat, daring him to so much as squirm. He didn't. The lady might be a shrimp of femininity, too small to hurt a gnat, but Riley had learned early on in his career to respect a woman in a temper.
And Becca was, to put it mildly, ready to skin him alive. With her jaw set tightly and her mouth a compressed, angry line, she could have intimidated a linebacker.
But all Riley could think about was how pretty she looked with her eyes flashing and hot color stealing into her cheeks.
You're losing it, man, a disgusted voice grumbled in his head, really losing it. In case you hadn't noticed, the lady's dying to string you up by your thumbs right here in front of God and everyone. Your mouth got you into this—it better get you out of it. So if you don't want to come off sounding like the biggest redneck west of the Mississippi, you'd better damn well get your act together.
Stiffening, he said tersely, "Fine. Then let's walk over to my office and you can talk all you want. I'm sure Wanda has other customers who could use this booth."
"Hey, don't leave on my account," the waitress called in passing as she carried a plate of pancakes to diners at a nearby table.
"You're great for business."
With a toss of her head, she gestured behind her. Riley took one look and swore. The diner was full of bank and city employees on their morning coffee break who should have been preparing to go back to work.
Instead, the inhabitants of every booth seemed unusually interested in what was going on at the far end of the restaurant. A few of the more daring ones were even staring openly. Becca, as aware as he of their audience, couldn't quite hold back a triumphant smile.
"You had your turn to make your feelings public, Sheriff. Don't you believe in turn-about-fair-play?"
"Of course."
"So let's start with your criticism that I'm a stranger.
An outsider, I believe you said."
Though color seeped into his rugged cheeks, he didn't, to his credit, shift in his seat as he longed to.
"I only meant that the people here know me."
"But they didn't when you moved here from Miami tell years ago," she argued.
"No one knew you from Adam, and you didn't have family here like I did.
You still got elected, so I guess there's hope for me, isn't there?"
"Maybe." He conceded the point grudgingly, but not before adding, "But you're not me. You don't have my background."
She gave him a smile that had an edge to it, her green eyes all too knowing.
"Don't you mean sex? Isn't that what this is all about? I'm just not the right sex?" Every woman in the place seemed to be glaring daggers at him, waiting for him to talk his way out of that one. Scowling, he gave Beeea a hard, irritated glance.
"Look, I'm not a sexist"
"Oh, really? Could have fooled me."
Struggling to hang on to his patience, Riley shot her a frown that would have sent any one of his deputies scurrying for cover. Far from being impressed, Becca didn't even blink.
A muscle ticking along his jaw, he said through his teeth, "If you'll just shut up for a minute and let me explain"
"I'm all ears," she said sweetly, the dimples in her cheeks deepening.
"Please, go ahead."
Eyeing her taunting smile, Riley gave serious consideration to strangling her right then and there. He'd never met a woman who could push his buttons so easily.
"I can understand why you're upset," he began carefully.
"But somewhere between my interview with Sydney and this morning's paper, my words got twisted" — As if he'd conjured her up, Sydney suddenly jerked open the front door and stepped into the diner, her gaze immediately zeroing in on the last booth as if she'd already known who was sitting there. Her words, as she started toward the b
ack, confirmed it.
"A little birdie called me and told me I should get over here, and now I know why."
Caught between a rock and a hard place, Riley wondered how a day that had started out so badly could have possibly gotten worse.
"This doesn't concern you, Sydney," he said flatly.
"Mrs. Prescott and I were having a private conversation."
Undaunted; she slid into the booth next to Becca and threw him a jaunty smile.
"I believe I heard my name mentioned a few seconds ago. That means I'm invited to the party. So what was this about me twisting your words?
If you want to blame somebody for the hot water you're in, you'd better take a good hard look at yourself. I only reported what you told me.
"I never said" — That's as far as he got. Jerking open her purse, Sydney pulled out her notebook and flipped to the notes from the previous day's interview. Transcribing her own peculiar brand of shorthand, she read back his words to him verbatim, loud enough so that everyone in the hushed diner heard them. Except for the order in which they were given, they were exactly the same as the ones in the morning paper.
Snapping the notebook shut, she lifted an amused brow.
"You were saying?"
Everyone in the diner seemed to lean forward at once, like actors in a Merrill Lynch commercial waiting for Riley to drop an insider stock tip. For a man who didn't especially like the limelight, it was a damn uncomfortable position to be in. And if he didn't find a way to pull his butt out of the fire, the election was going to be decided here and now, before the campaign had even started. "Okay, so I made a mistake."
He admitted it easily, but there was no doubting his sincerity.
"I spoke without thinking and ended up sounding like a jackass. The election isn't about sex, but I can't blame you ladies for thinking that after what I said. My words just came out wrong, and if I offended anyone, I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention."
The apology was extended to every woman there, but it was Becca he spoke to, Becca he looked at unflinchingly.