“No, thanks. I’m stuffed.” She looked at her watch, wondering what was keeping Reese. He’d called first thing that morning and said it was important that he talk to her. They’d agreed to meet here at the café at six o’clock this evening. It was now almost six-thirty and there was no sign of him.
Anticipation winged through her each time the café door swung open. She was concerned about how eager she was to see him again. It both worried her and frightened her.
She thought of those moments in the grape arbor the evening before. His caresses had successfully chased away the taste of death that had lingered in her mouth. But he’d also managed to chase away every ounce of good sense she possessed. And those brief moments of insanity had been heavenly. That’s what scared her. It was ridiculous to think about getting involved with him once again, and yet it was impossible not to dream of being in his arms, making love with him.
“Here we are.” Anna returned to the table, interrupting Sarah’s thoughts and the conversation Lindy and Jackie had been having about dogs. “You okay, honey?” Anna asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet this evening.”
“Mama fell down in the well last night,” Jackie explained.
Anna gasped. “What?” She stared at Sarah. “What well?”
“The old one out by the grape arbor. I forgot all about it, walked over it and the wooden cover must have been rotten,” Sarah explained, wishing her daughter had never brought up the subject.
“My soul,” Anna replied. “How on earth did you manage to get out?”
“The sheriff man pulled her out. He saved her,” Jackie said.
“Lindy called Reese and he came and got me out,” Sarah explained. “I was lucky enough to manage to grab hold of a big root and break my fall.”
“You poor dear.” Anna clucked sympathetically. “I’ll bet you’re starting to feel like everyone is out to get you. First you get shot at, then you fall down a well!”
Sarah laughed. “No, I’m just feeling very unlucky.”
“How’s your head?” Anna asked.
“Much better.” Sarah reached up and touched the tender area self-consciously. She’d stopped wearing the bandage and the wound was healing nicely. Her hair was even starting to grow back over the closely cropped area.
“Hey, ladies,” Suzanna greeted them, approaching their table with fresh coffee.
“Hi, Suzanna,” Lindy greeted her with a friendly smile. “Where have you been keeping yourself lately?”
Suzanna pointed a thumb at Anna. “The slave driver has been keeping me busy.”
“Humph...that will be the day,” Anna snorted.
“What’s this I heard about a fall down a well?” she asked, looking at Sarah curiously.
“It was nothing...just an accident,” Sarah replied, simply wanting to put the frightening experience behind her.
“Mr. Sheriff saved her,” Jackie said.
“Well, isn’t that lucky,” Suzanna said, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked again at Sarah. “It seems you’re keeping our sheriff mighty busy these days. Reese hardly has time for the rest of us.” For a brief moment her lips formed a pout of displeasure, then she smiled again. “Oh well, I suppose that’s what a good sheriff does, takes care of those in need, right?”
Sarah nodded, somehow relieved when the blonde turned her gaze toward Lindy.
“How are you doing, hon?” Suzanna asked Lindy, touching her arm lightly in a gesture of friendliness.
“Okay, but the dogs have missed your visits,” Lindy said.
Suzanna laughed. “They miss the bones I bring them.”
“And I miss the days when waitresses worked instead of standing around and chatting with the customers,” Anna remarked pointedly.
Suzanna rolled her eyes and headed off to refill the coffee cups of other customers.
“I didn’t know you and Suzanna were friends,” Sarah observed.
“When Mama got the flu last year, Suzanna came out to the farm just about every night to bring stuff that Anna had cooked,” Lindy explained.
“I never seen anyone who had the flu so bad. Margaret couldn’t keep anything down except my chicken-and-rice soup,” Anna said. They all fell silent for a moment and Sarah knew both Lindy and Anna were thinking of Margaret.
“Ah, here comes our hero now,” Anna exclaimed brightly as Reese walked through the door.
As usual, at the sight of him a burst of warmth flooded through Sarah. He was out of uniform, clad instead in a pair of worn jeans and a heavy denim shirt that emphasized the broadness of his chest, the slimness of his hips.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, his gaze lingering on Sarah, then moving to encompass the rest of the group. “There was an accident out on route five and I had to make a report.”
“I hope nobody was hurt,” Anna said.
He shook his head. “It was just a fender bender. One of Benson’s cows got out of the pasture and decided to stand in the middle of the road. Mrs. Jordon was coming home from the library and in trying to dodge the cow hit a fence post.”
“Mr. Sheriff?” Jackie stood up on the booth and tugged at Reese’s shirtsleeve. “Mama told us that you saved her and pulled her out of the well yesterday. Thank you for saving my mama.” She reached out and placed a hand on either side of his face, then kissed him on the cheek.
She immediately released him and he stepped back, his expression unreadable and his cheeks slightly colored. I’ll be damned, Sarah thought. In all the years she’d known Reese, she’d never seen him blush. But that’s definitely what he appeared to be doing at the moment.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, finally offering the little girl a self-conscious half smile. He looked back at Sarah. “I need to talk to you—alone.”
“We can move to a booth in the back,” Sarah offered.
He frowned, obviously finding the busy diner too public for whatever he had to discuss with her. “Would you take a walk with me?”
She hesitated a moment before answering. Lindy and Jackie were just about finished with their meals. She hated to make them sit and wait for her.
“Why don’t I take Lindy and Jackie on back to the farm,” Anna suggested. “Suzanna can close up. I was going to leave early tonight anyway.” She looked at Sarah. “I’ll sit and visit with Lindy and Jackie until you get back home.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Lindy said, smiling at Anna affectionately. “It’s been months since you’ve been out to our place. I can show you the pattern of the new wallpaper I want to buy for the kitchen and tell you my plans for the living room.”
“Great,” Reese said before Sarah could protest.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Sarah asked Anna.
“Positive. I’ve been meaning to get out there and this is a perfect opportunity for me to spend some time with this little peanut.” She touched Jackie on the end of her nose, causing the little girl to giggle.
Sarah gave her daughter a quick kiss on the cheek. “You be good for Anna and Lindy, and I’ll be home in a while.”
“Reese, could I speak with you for a minute?” Suzanna called to him from across the room.
With an apologetic glance at Sarah, he walked across the room to where Suzanna stood. The blonde spoke to him quickly and placed a hand on his arm. He shook his head, said something back to her, then shook his head once again. Suzanna turned on her heels and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Reese said as he approached where Sarah stood by the front door.
“Problem?” she asked.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” he replied curtly.
Moments later, she and Reese walked out into the cool night air. Although it was just after six-thirty, already Main Street looked deserted. Clay Creek was a town where evening was family time and families still ate together, talked together, shared together. There was no rush-hour traffic, no honking horns and swearing drivers. There was simply the aura of a town at rest, the light wind’s sigh signali
ng day’s end.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about? You made it sound very important when you called earlier.” She broke the silence that momentarily surrounded them.
“Let’s walk for just a few minutes. I need to gather my thoughts,” he replied.
She nodded, finding the night, the quiet of the streets comfortable. It was as if her hometown embraced her, wrapped her in the loving arms she had missed since leaving so many years before. But what chased the comfort away was the knowledge that the welcoming warmth of Clay Creek was temporary and the town would never again be her home.
“Lindy tells me you’re dating Suzanna,” she said, suddenly needing to remember that she had no place here, with him.
“We were dating, but it wasn’t anything serious. We aren’t dating at all anymore.” He grinned at her, a mocking little smile. “Why? Jealous?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed, heat washing over her face. “I was just curious.”
They walked for a few minutes in silence.
“It’s nice to know you can still walk the streets of this town after dark and not be afraid,” she observed. She looked up at Reese, noting the proprietary gaze he cast around him. Somehow in the passing of time, he’d claimed the town as his own...or the town had finally claimed him.
She was happy for him. Happy that he seemed to have found some sort of inner peace, had learned to take pride in his roots. She wondered what had caused him to change from a rebellious, angry boy into the man he had become. Suddenly she thought of something. “Reese, that scar on your chest. How did you get it?” Her fingers tingled and she felt a blush warm her cheeks as she remembered the feel of the puckered skin along with the feel of his heated flesh and the smooth expanse of muscle. As she felt her blush deepen, she was grateful for the twilight shadows that surrounded them.
“I call it my coming-of-age wound,” he said, his hand moving to touch his chest.
“What do you mean? What happened?”
He slowed their pace, his features thoughtful. “I told you I went a little bit crazy after you left. Well, to be more precise, I was on a direct road to destruction. I started drinking, getting into fights. One night I drove out to that liquor store on route ten. I didn’t realize it was near closing time and the place had been robbed twice before by somebody driving a car resembling mine. I walked in, swaggering and belligerent as I was most of the time, and the clerk assumed it was a robbery. He pulled out a pistol and shot me.”
“My God,” Sarah gasped. Involuntarily she reached out and grabbed his arm, as if to reassure herself of his safety. They stopped walking and stood beneath the harsh glare of the streetlight. The lamplight emphasized the lean, dangerous beauty of his face, the features that had haunted her for six years. Quickly she pulled her hand away from the warmth of his arm.
“They say in those moments before death, your entire life flashes before your eyes. Death opened its mouth in my face, ready to swallow me up, and you know what scared me more than anything?” His eyes glittered darkly and his features grew taut. “Nothing flashed before my eyes. It was the bleakest, most empty feeling I’ve ever known, because I realized that was my life—bleak and empty. When I woke up in the hospital, Jim Taylor was there.”
“And he offered you a job?”
Reese nodded. “He told me life had dealt me a crappy hand—a mother who left and a drunk for a father. He made me see that I had a choice. I could either stay angry and eventually end up in the morgue, or I could decide to do something with my life, fill up that emptiness with positive images.” He gave her a jaunty grin. “I may have been wild, but I wasn’t completely stupid. I knew it was time to make some changes.”
He started walking once again and Sarah hurried to catch up with him. “I spent a lot of time hating this town. I blamed it for my mother leaving, for my dad’s drinking. I figured if we’d lived any other place in the world, things would have been different. While I was recuperating, I did a lot of thinking and realized the problem wasn’t Clay Creek, it was me. It was time to stop trying to run away from this town and learn to live in it.”
“I’m glad for you, Reese.” And she was. Despite her own disappointments and disillusionment, despite the fact that he couldn’t change the circumstances that had forced her to leave Clay Creek or offer her any hope for the future, she was glad that he had found his own personal sense of peace. It seemed only fair that at least one of them find a modicum of happiness.
She paused as he turned to go up the sidewalk that led to a two-story clapboard house. “Where...where are we going?” she asked.
“This is my place,” he replied, pulling a set of keys from his pocket. “We can talk here.”
Sarah’s footsteps dragged. “I thought we were just taking a walk.”
“Sarah, I really need to talk to you about something important and it needs to be in private.” He seemed to sense her hesitancy. “Please, just give me a few minutes.”
“Okay,” she relented, admitting to herself that, if nothing else, she was curious to see where Reese now lived. When she’d left Clay Creek, he’d lived with his father in a tiny shanty on the edge of town. The yard had been filled with old car parts and weeds. The screen door had hung askew and the paint had weathered to a dull gray. She’d since heard that his father had died and that old shanty had been torn down.
This place was much different. The yard was neatly tended and the shutters looked as if they had recently received a fresh coat of paint. It was obvious that a man who took pride in his home resided here.
The house smelled of him. She noticed it the moment she stepped through the door and into the living room. It smelled of cool night air mingling with the more subtle odors of shaving cream, soap and cologne—a wonderful blend of wildness and domesticity.
“Have a seat.” He motioned her toward the sofa. “How about something to drink? I’m afraid your choices are rather limited—coffee or a soft drink?”
She shook her head. “Nothing for me.”
“I’ll just grab a soda. Be right back.”
When he disappeared, Sarah looked around the room. It was simply furnished with an overstuffed sofa in black and gray and a matching recliner chair. An entertainment center held a stereo, the television and several mystery novels.
For the first time she allowed herself to wonder why he’d brought her here, what he wanted to discuss. She was too smart to entertain the notion that he was going to profess eternal love for her and Jackie, that he was going to take her in his arms and tell her he wanted to live the rest of his life with the two of them. She still sensed an anger in him, an anger directed toward her. He didn’t want Jackie but was angry for the choice she made six years ago. It didn’t make sense.
She felt herself tense as he came back in and sat down on the sofa next to her. The soberness of his expression let her know that whatever he wanted to discuss with her wasn’t going to be particularly pleasant.
Reese took a deep swallow of his soda, then placed the can on the coffee table and turned to look at her. She looked at him curiously, with those beautiful Calhoun eyes, and he regretted the fact that he was about to tell her something that would place fear in their blue depths. “Sarah, there’s no easy way to say this. I think somebody is trying to harm you.”
“What?” She looked at him incredulously. “What on earth are you talking about?”
He jumped up from the sofa and went to the coat closet. Reaching inside, he withdrew the portion of the wood that had covered the well and given way beneath her the night before. “I took this over to Jim this morning. I wanted him to look at it and see if he came up with the same conclusion I did.”
“And what conclusion is that?” Sarah asked, her voice slightly impatient.
“Somebody sawed nearly through this wood. On the surface, it looked strong and safe, but it would have cracked under any weight at all. It was intended for you to walk over it, and for it to break and you to fall down that well.”
> “But that’s crazy,” she whispered, her eyes darkening in bewilderment. “There must be some mistake...you must be wrong.”
“I wish I was.” He moved the piece of the wood closer to her, then took her hand and guided it over the area where it had broken. “Feel the smoothness—you can see the cut marks. And smell it. There’s no doubt about it, it was cut in the past couple of days.”
“But—but why? Why would somebody do something like this?” She pulled her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself, as if feeling a sudden draft.
“That’s what I was hoping you could help me figure out.” He put the wood back into the closet, then rejoined her on the sofa.
“Surely we’re just overreacting to an isolated incident,” she protested.
He nodded, understanding her reaction. “That’s what I thought at first. But it’s not an isolated incident. You were also shot,” he reminded her. “The shooting by itself could be construed as an accident, but this...” He let his voice trail off for a moment, then continued. “I think we have to face the possibility that somebody is trying to intentionally harm you.”
“But the gunshot was probably just a hunter...”
He could see by the emotions in her eyes that she was struggling to make sense of the senseless. “Sarah, we haven’t had a hunting accident around here in years. Most of the men who hunt are responsible gun owners who practice safety first. Everyone knows your place. Why would anyone hunt on your property?”
She ran a hand through her hair, obviously trying to absorb everything he’d said. Once again she wrapped her arms around herself and he felt the shiver that swept over her. He fought the impulse to gather her in his arms, hold her close, keep the darkness and uncertainty at bay.
“We need to figure out why all this is happening. Is there anything you can think of, any reason why somebody would want to harm you?”
She shook her head, her shivering now uncontrollable. “You’re frightening me,” she said softly. This time he gave in to his impulse. He pulled her into his arms, surrounding her with his warmth and strength.
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