The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

by Kathleen Creighton

  He shook off the vague uneasiness as he pulled up at the top of the saddleback ridge-from long habit; he was too distracted to appreciate the view this particular day. He had enough on his mind right now without worrying what might be troubling his father-in-law.

  “Hard not to worry,” he said as Boyd reined Foxy in alongside him. “Still haven’t found whoever it was tried to shoot her yesterday. Then there’s the little matter of how I’m gonna keep her from going to prison for the rest of her life.”

  “You’ll get him,” Boyd growled. “She ain’t gonna go to prison.”

  Again Roan looked over at him with those questions he couldn’t quite pin down floating in his mind. But the old man was leaning on his saddlehorn, squinting at the blue mountains off in the distance.

  Something stirred across the back of Roan’s neck. His Spirit Messenger again? It had been awhile since he’d felt that particular touch, and he was about half amused and half annoyed with himself for entertaining such superstitious nonsense.

  He wondered what it was trying to tell him this time.

  He didn’t have much time to wonder, though, because right then he heard a shout, and at the same time Boyd rose up in his stirrups and said, “Oh hell.”

  Roan looked where he was looking and saw Susie Grace had gotten impatient, as usual, and taken off across the meadow at full gallop. Right behind her was Mary on the dapple-gray mare, bouncing up and down and holding on for dear life.

  “Kid needs a good paddlin’,” Boyd said as he nudged his horse forward.

  Loping along beside him, Roan was too busy watching Mary to answer that, though at the moment he pretty much agreed with the sentiment. His heart felt as though it had lodged in his throat, and this time it wasn’t his daughter he was scared breathless for. “Why the hell is she taking off after her like that? What’s she trying to do, race?”

  Boyd snorted. “Probably wasn’t her idea. That horse always did like to run.”

  “Once a barrel racer, always a barrel racer,” Roan muttered.

  “Better go after her, boy. Need to be a better rider than that little gal to stay on a cuttin’ horse if it takes a notion to change direction.”

  Roan had already kicked Springer into full gallop.

  For Mary the world had become a bouncing, quivering blur that rushed past her at the speed of a runaway train. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, though her mouth was wide open. She could feel air rushing into her lungs but couldn’t seem to push it back out again. Insects smacked against her face, tears welled up in her eyes and were torn away by the wind. Hard leather spanked her backside and bruised her in even more sensitive places, and all she could do was grip the saddlehorn and hang on, too paralyzed with fear even to pray.

  The wild ride ended abruptly, in a slow-motion, nightmarish sort of way. There was an extra hard jolt, and Mary felt herself flying through quiet space…turning gracefully, silently, like a windmill, head over heels. Then she slithered along warm, slick horsehide to land in tall, tickly grass with a thump that jarred her teeth and turned the world blank for a second or two.

  She was staring up at the pale-blue sky, brain still on lock-down, when she felt something bump gently against the top of her head. Hot moist breath smelling strongly of masticated hay gusted through her hair. She tilted her head, rolled her eyes back and found herself gazing up at the mottled gray underbelly of a whale. A whale with legs. She whimpered feebly, certain she was about to be trampled to death.

  Especially when she felt the ground beneath her shake.

  Instead, she heard a voice, deep and growly and hoarse, calling her name. She heard heavy, huffing breaths, the slap of reins and creak of saddle leather, thumping footsteps, and then a pale Stetson blotted out the sky.

  “Roan?” she croaked, and heard a sharp exhalation and a whispered, “Thank God…”

  “Wha’happened?” Was that her voice, so thin and frail? She couldn’t seem to get enough air behind it.

  “Shh,” he said gently, “don’t talk. Lie still.” He took off his hat and laid it on the grass, then bent over her and looked into her eyes.

  She gazed back at him, sure she’d never seen a face so beautiful, even with the mouth hard and tight and eyes narrowed and burning like fire. No, ice. Fire and ice-that’s what he is. Ice on the outside, fire on the inside.

  “I guess I fell off, huh?” she said, answering her own question since he didn’t seem inclined to.

  The thumbprints in his cheeks deepened, though it would have been a stretch to call the curve of his lips a smile. His hand gently smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Yeah, you did-wasn’t your fault, though.”

  “I’ll say it wasn’t!” She struggled to sit up, but Roan’s hands kept her from it. “The…stupid horse just…took off. Why’d she do that? I didn’t tell her to.”

  “Your horse took off because Susie Grace’s horse did. Herd instinct.” He was frowning as his hands roved quickly over her body…her arms, her legs. “All horses like to race-that one in particular. You hurt anywhere?”

  “Everywhere,” she groaned, but it was a lie; nothing hurt now that he was touching her. Nothing had ever felt so good as those hard, gentle hands.

  “Good-pain’s good. Means it’s not likely your neck’s broken.” He paused to tilt his head toward the dapple-gray mare, now placidly chomping a mouthful of grass a few feet away. “She used to be a barrel racer.”

  “Susie Grace mentioned that.” Mary had lived in rodeo country long enough to know what barrel racing was. She’d just never realized what that meant. “How does something that big, moving that fast, stop so suddenly?”

  Roan’s frown relaxed, and his chuckle sounded warm, relieved. “That’s a quarter horse for you.” He sat back on his heels, one hand draped across his knee, and his eyes caressed her with a light that was like sunshine to growing things.

  And like those growing things, she felt herself-not physically, but inside, her whole being-yearning toward him, being pulled to him, nourished by him.

  What happens to growing things when the sun goes away?

  She glared at his hand, angry with herself for wanting it not to be so far away. For wanting it touching her again.

  “Nothing seems to be broken,” Roan said, smiling at her finally. “Guess you can get up now.”

  “Thanks,” Mary muttered, lifting an arm to pillow her head, “but I’d just as soon stay right here.” The thought of getting back on that horse made her stomach turn over.

  As if he’d read her mind, he brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers and said softly, “You’re gonna have to do it sometime, Miss Mary.”

  She closed her eyes and stubbornly shook her head. The feel of his fingers on her cheek made her whole face ache. And her heart. How did I do this? How did I let this happen?

  The ground under her had begun to shake again. She lifted her head and saw Susie Grace galloping toward them up the gentle slope, her blue cowboy hat bouncing against her back. Boyd was there, too, she saw now, sitting on his spotted Appaloosa horse a little way off, leaning on his saddlehorn, watching.

  “Mary! Mary-are you all right?” Susie Grace yelled as she reined Tootsie to a jolting, jarring halt. “What happened? I didn’t see you. Did you fall off?”

  “Stay right where you are, Missy.” Roan had risen to his feet, ominous as a thunderhead. He caught the red-gold mare’s bridle, patted her sweat-soaked neck and soothed her as she snorted and tossed her head. “What did you think you were doing? Haven’t Grampa and I both talked to you about running off like that?” His voice was as stern as Mary had ever heard it.

  “I’m sorry,” Susie Grace hunched her shoulders, looking small and contrite.

  Roan didn’t soften an inch. “Sorry’s too late. Mary’s lucky she didn’t break her neck. What would you do if she had, Susan? Tell me that. Sorry isn’t gonna fix a broken neck.”

  Susie Grace, whose face had been crumpling by degrees, opened her mouth and began to wail
at the top of her lungs.

  “That isn’t gonna help,” Roan said darkly, raising his voice over the noise. “You’re still gonna be grounded a good long while.” He looked over at Boyd and jerked his head toward the howling child. “You mind taking her back? Mary and I’ll be along in a while.”

  Boyd clicked to his mare and made a “Come here” gesture with his head. “Come on with me, little bit. Quit bellerin’. This’s what happens when you don’t do what you’re told.”

  Roan let go of Tootsie’s bridle and the mare trotted off after Boyd, tail switching, Susie Grace bouncing in the saddle, still wailing.

  “She didn’t mean to hurt me,” Mary said as she watched them go, more upset from the child’s distress than her own fall.

  “I know she didn’t.” Roan had scooped up the gray mare’s reins and was brushing her down, checking the cinch, adjusting the stirrups. “That’s not the point. She’s been told not to go running off like that, and she did it anyway. Showing off in front of you, I guess, I don’t know. But that’s no excuse for not minding.” He glanced at her, then quickly away, but not before she saw the pain-a parent’s anguish, she realized. She’d never thought before how hard it must be to discipline a beloved child. “Boyd and I are both pretty easy on her-maybe too easy. But when I do make a point to tell her not to do something, there’s generally a damn good reason for it.”

  He gave the cinch a final tug, patted it flat, then turned to her and held out his hand. “Come on-up you get.”

  He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes held something…a glowing warmth, a kindling promise…that made her inside yearn toward him even as her outside cringed away and her voice, dark and cracking with suspicion said, “Up where?”

  He patted the saddle, the smile coming slowly, now, though still a little wry. “Everybody falls off a horse from time to time. Happens. When it does, what you do is get right back on.”

  “Uh-uh.” She scrambled to her feet, ignoring his hand and trying not to moan as bruises and abused muscles screamed in outrage. “That’s what you’d do. I, on the other hand, have no intention of getting back on that horse-or any other horse-ever again, thank you very much.” She brushed at her rear and glared at him-which wasn’t easy, when he looked at her like that.

  “How’re you gonna get back home?” His face now was serene, and he stood there smiling at her like some kind of cowboy angel, one hand on the back of the saddle, breezes riffling his hair and the sun glancing off it like tiny light-swords.

  Her stomach went hollow, then hot. Juices pooled in her throat. “I’ll walk,” she said doggedly, standing her ground.

  He chuckled. Mary sucked in a breath and drew herself up, bolstered, now, by both anger and pride. She peeled a wind-blown lock of hair away from her mouth, then shaded her eyes with her hand. “It’s that way, right?”

  His laughter was soft as his hand snaked out and caught her arm before she could take the first step…though to be truthful, had she really wanted to? He pulled her to him gently, and her heart began to knock so fiercely against her ribs she could hardly breathe. He captured her face in one big hand; his fingers stroked her hair away from her forehead, his thumb lightly grazed her lips, which parted helplessly under his touch. Her lips felt swollen…hot, as if they’d been stung.

  “I’m not getting on that horse,” she mumbled.

  “Ah, Miss Mary…” His soft growl vibrated deep inside her, seemed to fill all the spaces inside her…like a cat’s purr, and between the words he paused to touch warm smooth lips to her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose and her chin. “Who’d have thought…you could be…so contrary?”

  She whimpered helplessly, already lost. Then…he took her mouth. Not roughly, not greedily, just…completely. His arms came around her, and his body was hard against her breasts, and his mouth was inside and outside…everywhere. It felt warm and fierce…but gentle, too…warm and sweet and good. It didn’t feel like being lost, at all. It felt like coming home.

  He kissed her until she was shaking all over, until she thought her legs wouldn’t hold her, that she would crumple to the ground if he let her go. But he didn’t let her go, only turned his mouth from hers and, gasping, pressed her face against the hollow of his shoulder. And it wasn’t his strength and substance and virility that made her throat ache and tears spring unbidden to her eyes. It was the tiny vibrations she could feel coursing through his muscles and deep inside his powerful body…and the realization that it was she who’d caused this strong and self-reliant man to tremble.

  She felt his chest deflate and a gust of breath stir her hair. “I’ve been wantin’ to do that.”

  “I’ve been wanting you to,” she whispered.

  Holding her body close to his, he leaned his head and shoulders back to look down at her. “Really?” His grin was wider, the dents in his cheeks deeper than she’d ever seen them.

  Her heart turned over. “Stop looking so smug,” she said, melting inside. “You know I have. I haven’t been able to think about anything else since…yesterday.”

  “No kidding? Not even getting shot at?”

  “Not even that,” she lied; it didn’t seem like the moment to tell him about the nightmares that had plagued her sleep.

  “Miss Mary…I’m gonna kiss you again.” His voice rumbled from his chest into hers. He touched his lips lightly to the tip of her nose…then her eyelids…then her smile, and she turned her face blissfully upward like a thirsty flower to the rain. “Then…I’m gonna put you up on this horse and take you to a quiet place I know of and make love to you. That okay with you?”

  She murmured something drunken in response, no longer caring whether she had to get back on a horse or not. She’d have ridden a buffalo if it meant she could stay with him just a little longer.

  He brought her to a meadow glade he knew, where a friendly chuckling creek meandered and the grass was thick and warm and the air smelled of pine needles baking in the sun. He could be alone with her here, and for a few precious hours pretend it was all the world that mattered.

  “So beautiful,” Mary sighed, walking slowly through the grass, looking around her at the pine trees’ sheltering walls.

  “Yes,” Roan agreed, looking only at her.

  He tied the horses in the shade and took off their saddles, then untied the blanket roll on the back of his saddle and spread it on the tall soft grass beside the creek. He turned to Mary and held out his hand. She came to him slowly, like someone in a dream, and he drew a deep, wondering breath, half-afraid to believe this could be real, that he could be here in this place with this woman in this moment, and that he could feel, for the first time in four years, so utterly and completely happy.

  He took her face between his two hands and lowered his parted lips to hers, and felt hers stir lazily, drunkenly into a smile. He felt her hands come to lie on his sides…felt the delicate trembling of her body. He made himself kiss her only lightly, at first, holding still and brushing his lips over hers as if it was the very first time, as if he was only now learning the shape and textures of her, testing his patience and self-control. And then, failing the test joyfully, he sank into her warm sweet depths and lost himself there.

  “Been wantin’ to do this,” he mumbled as he resurfaced dizzy and intoxicated, quaking with need of her already.

  “I think we are,” she whispered, laughing faintly.

  “No…this.” His fingers felt for the buttons on her shirt…began to work their way down. He drew back a little, asked the question with his eyes, and receiving his answer in her shimmering golden gaze, watched his hands pull the two halves of the shirt apart, then push them over her shoulders.

  He undressed her slowly while her eyes clung to him and his to her, skimming his hands and mouth over each part as he uncovered it, touching her lightly the same way he’d kissed her at first, learning her body in its finest detail, committing each detail to memory, taking the taste and texture and smell of her into his pores, his mind, his being. And
in introducing himself to her body’s secrets in sensitive and clever ways, made her his in the only way he knew how.

  When she was trembling too hard to stand and begging him in shaken, inarticulate whispers, he laid her down on the blanket, then undressed quickly and stretched himself alongside her, head propped on one hand so he could look down at her, lying golden, flushed and dewy in the sun. Her lips were swollen and moist from his kisses, and when she smiled at him, his heart quivered.

  She reached up and touched back a fallen lock from his forehead, then seined through his hair with her fingers, like a weaver. Her lips parted suddenly, urgently, and her breath snagged on the words that didn’t come.

  “What?” he said tenderly, when he saw something flare, bright and desperate, in her eyes.

  For a moment it hovered there, whatever it was she’d wanted to tell him, balanced like a raindrop on the tip of her tongue. Then her face spasmed, so lightly he might have missed it if he hadn’t known its shapes and moods so well. Her eyes darkened with something that looked like pain, but she smiled at him brightly and whispered, “I want you to kiss me again…please.”

  So he did, tenderly as he knew how, his heart swelling inside him with longing and hope…the possibility that the words she couldn’t bring herself to say might be the same ones locked inside his mind, the ones he still felt he had no right to say. Not yet. Not until he’d made things right for her again.

  I love you…stay with me forever.

  It was all there in his heart, though, as he kissed her, and she kissed him back eagerly, laughing with tears, as if she heard him.

  He took his mouth from hers and moved it to her throat, paused to measure the tripping beat of her pulse…faster, even than his own…then left it to wander down her body. He let his hand lead, cupping each breast before his mouth could find its tip…fingers spreading across the silky skin of her stomach, making patterns for his tongue to follow, while she held his head lightly against her, neither guiding nor impeding, fingers weaving through his hair, warm as blessings on his scalp.