The Sheriff's Secret Wife

by Christyne Butler

  "Add a plain bagel, lightly toasted with butter on the side, and two large apple juices. Oh, can you throw in a bottle of aspirin? Thanks." He hung up and turned around. "What?"

  "How…how did you know what I like for breakfast?"

  He shrugged one wide shoulder and brushed past her. "We both stop in most mornings at Sherry's Diner. I notice these things."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To the bathroom. Do you mind?"

  He didn't wait for her to reply, but disappeared through the double arched doors at the other end of the room. Racy eyed the rumpled sheets on the king-size bed. Flashes of wild, uninhibited lovemak—

  No, she wouldn't call it that. Last night was sex. Pure and simple and lusty and wonderful.

  "He can't know I remember. He can't."

  She quickly made up the bed, then grabbed her panties off the trophy and shoved them, along with her scattered clothes, into the zippered compartment of her suitcase. Pulling out clean clothes, she dragged undies and leggings over her bottom half. She pulled Gage's shirt over her head, then reached for the ratty gray zippered sweatshirt.

  She stilled. No, she couldn't put that on. Not with its previous owner about to walk back in. She doubted he'd remember, but she couldn't chance it. She yanked a T-shirt over her head as the bathroom door opened, no time for a bra.

  * * *

  Gage walked out of the bathroom, the marble floor of the suite's entry area cool against his bare feet. The memory of what he'd done to Racy last night—what she'd done to him, hell, what they'd done to each other—in the hot, foamy water of the huge tub took up every free corner of his still-foggy head.

  But not so foggy that he didn't notice the bed, its sheets, pillows and fancy patterned comforter, all neatly in place.

  His gaze then found Racy, dressed in some kind of stretchy black pants that defined every inch of her mile-long legs. Her mass of red curls, rumpled and sexy at the same time, hung past her shoulders. She wore a familiar T-shirt with faded lettering inviting him to Drown Your Secrets, Sorrows or Sweethearts at The Blue Creek Saloon.

  Great advice. The logo with its catchy phrase had been Racy's idea as manager and head bartender at The Blue Creek. Most in town figured it came directly from her life experiences, Gage included.

  So what did that make him? A secret or a sorrow? He sure as hell wasn't her sweetheart.

  "I figured you'd want this back."

  Racy's voice cut through his thoughts, forcing his eyes from the worn cotton material of her shirt outlining the roundness of her breasts. She wasn't wearing a bra. He buried that fact in his mind and focused on his shirt, which she held out at arm's length.

  He closed the distance between them, waiting until he stood directly in front of her to take it. He was crowding her personal space, but he didn't care. Not after last night.

  He broke eye contact long enough to pull the shirt over his head, not bothering to undo the buttons. It was still warm from her body. He had to bite back the groan that filled his throat.

  Spotting the certificate on top of her suitcase, he jerked his head toward it. "You know, this might not be true."

  Her chocolate-brown eyes grew wide for a moment. Then she blinked and turned away, reaching for the curled paper. "What makes you say that?"

  "That's not a legal document. Hell, it could've been created on any computer. The marriage license from the bureau is the only official paperwork."

  Racy pushed back the mass of red waves from her face and looked around the room. "So where's the license?"

  "I remember putting it in—" Gage patted his jeans pockets. "Where's my wallet?" He already knew his gun was stashed in the bedside table. He always knew where his gun was.

  "On the table."

  Gage turned, relief filling him as he spotted the black leather wallet and his badge. He crossed the room and grabbed it.

  "Wait a minute, you don't remember last night, either?"

  Racy's voice caused him to pause.

  No, he remembered.

  He remembered the absolute joy on her face when she had taken first place. He remembered finding her in one of the hotel bars, and the way she'd latched on to his side when he'd stepped between her and that jerk hitting on her. He remembered how one drink had led to many more, then the two of them slow-dancing—and how it had felt to finally hold her in his arms again.

  They never left each other's side after that.

  He'd gone from bar to casino to high-end boutique with her, not wanting the night to end. Then she'd appeared with the rings, insisting she had to make an honest man of him. He'd thought she was crazy, but they were both feeling so good he'd gone along for the ride. And after she'd insisted he prove his desire to still marry her, he'd done the one thing she'd never expect.

  He guessed it worked.

  "Gage, answer me. Do you remember us getting married?"

  He tightened his grip on the wallet, turned around and found her standing directly behind him. "The actual ceremony? No. But unlike you—" he couldn't stop from reaching out and brushing his fingers against her neck "—I can guarantee the honeymoon was fantastic."

  The faint bruising on her neck faded beneath the pink blush that tinged her skin. He remembered putting the mark on her—his mark—in the wee hours of the morning. He hadn't meant to. High school was the last time he'd given a girl a hickey, but her taste, her scent and her response to what his mouth was doing proved to be his undoing.

  And he liked it there. Obviously she hadn't seen it yet and it bothered him more than it should that in less than a week's time it'd be gone.

  Racy stepped away from his touch and crossed her arms over her stomach. "I don't remember a ceremony or a honeymoon. So, could you check and see if you have the license? Maybe none of this is real, maybe it's just a big—"

  "Mistake?"

  "Yes, a mistake." Her chin jerked upward and her hands fisted, but she didn't look away. "A misunderstanding, a mix-up, a joke someone is playing—"

  "I get it." Gage cut her off.

  Her words caused a sharp pain in his chest he didn't understand. So what if he'd wanted to get his hands on Racy Dillon for the last fifteen years and when he finally had, she couldn't remember a single moment?

  You remember though, don't ya, pal?

  Yeah, in vivid detail. Every sight, sound and smell of their time together, both in and outside of this hotel suite, was etched in his mind.

  He was so screwed.

  Pushing away that thought, he opened his wallet and found the folded license he'd tucked there after leaving the bureau office, never really believing they'd use it. He shook it out, his eyes scanning the words.

  "Well?"

  Her one-word question held so much hope, a part of him hated to reply. His pride, however, was going to take a perverse sort of pleasure in it. "Sorry, Mrs. Steele. It seems as of two thirty-three this morning we're actually hitched."

  Racy sank to the sofa, eyes wide with shock. His enjoyment of her distress drained away. He could see the idea of being married to him was turning her stomach.

  She finally looked at him. "Gage, what are we going to do?"

  "I can't think straight without coffee and I'm hungry as a bear. We should concentrate on eating first."

  "How can you think about food at a time like this?" Racy shot to her feet and advanced on him. "This is crazy! You don't want to be stuck with me and I sure as hell don't want to be married to you."

  Okay, that was plain enough. "Racy—"

  "We have to figure a way out of this. Can you imagine what the good citizens of Destiny would say if we showed up at home with matching rings?"

  Yeah, it'd probably cover everything from "atta boy" to "I give it six months."

  "You hate me! You've felt that way since high school."

  "I don't hate you."

  She snorted. "I'm not even worth that strong of an emotion, huh? Fine. Then you disapprove of me, of the way I live my life, of my family. Moonshining, drunk and
disorderly, petty theft, drugs…first your father and then you took great pleasure in busting my brothers, making sure that last time they got the maximum jail sentence."

  "I was doing my job."

  "The night my father drove that rattrap pickup into a telephone pole, you were the first one to my place—"

  "I didn't want you to hear about it from anyone else."

  "No, you wanted to break me…again. You wanted to see me cry over the fact my sorry excuse of a husband and my daddy were so drunk it wasn't the crash that killed them, but the both of them walking in front of an eighteen-wheeler an hour later."

  "Yeah, you were so brokenhearted you didn't shed a tear."

  She paused and swallowed hard. "I don't cry for anyone. Not anymore."

  Before he could respond, a discreet knock came at the door. Racy marched across the room. She flung open the door and waved the uniformed waiter and his cart inside.

  "Any place you'd like this?" the young kid asked with a polite smile. "The terrace is a favorite among our guests."

  Gage glanced at the glass doors at the other end of the suite. Racy and him in the open air thirty stories above the ground? Not on your life. "Ah, here is fine."

  He opened his wallet, but Racy snatched the bill from the cart, scratched her name on the paper inside the leather case and handed it to the waiter. "It's my suite. I'm paying."

  "Yes, ma'am." The waiter retreated to the doors. "Thank you, ma'am." He disappeared, closing the door behind him.

  Gage grabbed two chairs from the nearby dining table and shoved them on either side of the cart. The aroma coming from beneath the silver domes made his mouth water. He still felt like crap, but a hearty breakfast the morning after always did wonders for him. "Come on, sit."

  "Don't tell me what to do."

  "Fine." Gage sat. He needed coffee. Strong, black and right now. "Stand and eat. I really don't care."

  "Gage—"

  "Look, we both agree we need to figure out a way to fix this—"

  "And keep it a secret." Racy cut him off. "I don't want anyone to know how stupid I—how stupid we both were last night."

  The coffee burned on its way down his throat, but it was no more scorching than her words. Why it bothered him, he didn't want to think about. He should've known last night hadn't changed anything. The warm and fun-loving woman he'd held in his arms was an illusion.

  Reality was standing right here in front of him.

  "I'll call the concierge. We can't be the first couple to have morning-after regrets." Gage set aside the domes with a loud clang and reached for a fork. "What's that saying, 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas'?"

  The sight of a gold-and-diamond band shoved under his nose stopped the fork midway to his mouth. He looked up, but with her chin dropped, Racy's hair covered her face.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Here. Take it."

  "You bought it."

  "I don't care." She shook her head, dropping the ring into the water goblet next to his plate. It slowly sunk past the floating ice cubes to rest at the bottom. "I don't want it. Toss it, leave it for the maid…it doesn't matter to me."

  She grabbed the apple juice from the cart, her fingers gripping the glass, but it still sloshed over the rim as she headed across the suite. Seconds later, the bathroom door slammed closed behind her.

  Gage rose and started after her, stopping when he heard the sound of rushing water. The mental image of his wife in the oversize glass shower, water jets pulsating against her peaches-and-cream skin, had his lower half instantly responding.

  He jammed his fingers through his hair, his gaze catching on the gold band on his left hand. Tugging off the ring, he tossed it toward the cart, watching it make a perfect arc to join Racy's in the water glass with a splash.

  She wasn't his wife. In a matter of hours she wouldn't even be his ex-wife. What did one call a former spouse after an annulment?

  A mistake, that's what.

  Chapter Two

  Last week of January…

  "W hat in the hell are you talking about?"

  "There's no need to swear. Do I have to repeat myself?"

  Gage stared at his little sister. Okay, not so little, but still younger than him by a decade, sitting on the other side of the aged desk that had once belonged to their father. She'd appeared in his office early this cold Saturday morning to announce she'd gotten a job. At a bar, of all places.

  And not just any bar, Racy's bar.

  "Yes."

  "Racy hired me last night to work at The Blue Creek."

  "I was at The Blue Creek last night. I didn't see you." Gage refused to concede how just the sound of her name got his blood racing. Damn the woman! What had she done now?

  "Well, I was there and I didn't see you."

  "I stop in most nights to make sure everything is okay."

  "Yes, I can see how the big, bad sheriff waving around his badge would keep everyone on the straight and narrow."

  "I stay out of sight and I don't wave—" Gage pulled in a deep breath. He slowly released it and dropped his mail to his desk, his attention fully on his sister. "Gina, what are you doing? You've got two degrees, one of which is a master's."

  "For all the good it did me in the real world."

  The pain in his sister's voice was evident. When she'd arrived home from England just before Thanksgiving, he'd known something was wrong. Even Gina couldn't finish a year-long fellowship in less than three months.

  "Think I'm a bit overqualified to work in a bar?"

  "Yes."

  "Or is it I'm not pretty enough?"

  Where in the hell had that come from?

  Gage studied the rigid set of his sister's shoulders. Her sheepskin-lined denim jacket had once belonged to their father. With her curly hair pulled back in its usual ponytail and her gold-framed glasses, she could pass for a high school classmate of their younger sister, Giselle.

  She certainly didn't look like the waitresses who, thanks to their short skirts, tight jeans and barely-there T-shirts, served up beers and burgers at Destiny's local watering hole.

  Women like Racy.

  Last night she'd been dressed from head to toe in black, from the stomach-baring tank top to the jeans molding her perfect curves to the cowboy boots on her feet. The only color came from her flame-red hair and the gold jewelry she wore at her ears, neck and…belly button.

  The piercing was new. It hadn't been there five months ago. He should know. The gleaming diamond stud had fueled a fantasy he'd awoken from in the early morning hours, drenched in a cold sweat. Par for the course lately.

  "Thank you for rushing to my defense."

  Gage blinked, his sister's dry tone drawing him out of his thoughts. "Huh? No, you're pretty, you're beautiful. It's…"

  "I know. The girls who work there look…different." Gina glanced down at her clothes. "What can I say? My life has been more about books than looks, but Racy said she'd help me."

  "Help you?"

  "She offered to give me tips on hairstyles and clothes."

  Gage tried to picture his sister dressed like the flamboyant redhead. His mind wouldn't allow the visual to come to life. He leaned forward. "Gina, those girls aren't only selling booze and food. They're selling a good time. They flirt and tease—hell, Racy's even got them line dancing on the bar."

  "Racy said some of her girls work to help their families make ends meet."

  "True," Gage conceded, "but other than last night when's the last time you were in The Blue Creek? In any bar?"

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Most of Racy's girls are young, single and looking for a good time."

  Gina jumped to her feet. "Hey, I, too, am young, single and looking for a good time. I've had it with genius IQs and think tanks. All those years away at school, I don't even know most of the twentysomethings in this town. I want friends my own age. I want to meet guys my own age. Did you know this past summer was the first time…"
<
br />   Gina's voice trailed off. She closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them as she straightened. "I'm doing this, whether you like it or not. I came here first because Racy thought I should tell you."

  "She what?"

  "Racy said I should let you know about working for her."

  Yeah, he just bet she did. She'd hired Gina to spite him.