The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “You could have some great parties out here.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I bought it. With three bedrooms, it’s a little bigger than I needed, but I liked the idea of being able to have my deputies and their families here to kick back now and then.”

  “How many times have you done that in the nine months or so you’ve been sheriff?”

  “Three.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Cops are a close-knit group. We have to be. Our lives rest in each other’s hands.”

  Beth sighed, the dim lighting giving her a wistful look. “A family.”

  He supposed that was what they were. “In terms of unconditional trust, I guess you’re right. Though—” he grinned “—I certainly don’t love those jokers like I love my sister.”

  Gazing pensively at him, Beth said, “But then, if you had a brother you probably wouldn’t love him in the same way you love Bonnie, either.”

  She had him there. “So what about you?” He didn’t expect an answer.

  “I don’t have a lot of memories of my family.”

  Well, it was an answer but not much of one. “You’re adopted?”

  “Just not very close.” She put down her fork. Took a sip of wine. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to hear the band tonight.”

  As upsetting as the incident at the casino must have been to her, speaking of it was preferable to speaking about her life before Shelter Valley. Greg couldn’t help but file that information away.

  “I’ve got a couple of their CDs and they probably sound better on those, anyway.” The band had met with substantial success a decade or two ago, but their music was soft rock. As far as Greg was concerned, they were music’s version of a chick flick. He’d chosen the date for her, not himself. “I’ll bet you’ve got more than just two of their CDs,” he said, smiling at her. Last he knew, Bonnie and every one of her friends had the entire collection.

  “Nope.”

  “You didn’t spend your high school years crooning with them?”

  Beth’s look was blank. “I don’t think so. I don’t croon.” And then, “You’ve been rubbing your shoulder a lot. Is it bothering you?”

  He hadn’t realized he’d reached for it again. “Not really.”

  “You hurt it in that fall tonight, didn’t you.”

  Greg shrugged, determined not to wince as the movement pulled on the muscles just above his shoulder blade. “Bruised it a little, maybe.” It wasn’t a big deal.

  Beth’s expression was just short of a glare. “It’s your trapezius,” she said. “From watching that fall you took, I’ll bet it’s got one hell of a knot.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” he said. Her fussing made him uncomfortable; getting bruised was just something that happened—if not at work, then when he went to the gym or had a good sparring with a fellow black belt. A guy straining a muscle was as much a part of life as eating, sleeping and going to the john.

  “It’s gotta be spasming, too.”

  That sounded painful. “No. It’s fine.”

  “Whatever you say, macho man.”

  Greg wasn’t sure he liked the way she’d said that. But he was willing to let it lie.

  Pachelbel’s “Canon” came on. One of the few pieces of classical music Greg recognized by name.

  The music was haunting. Evocative. Sensual. Mixed with the cool night air, the semidarkness and Beth, it bordered on dangerous.

  And then, suddenly, he was reminded of that Sunday at Bonnie’s. Beth could probably play this song.

  He wanted her to play it for him. That piano tonight…

  “Tell me what happened at the casino. When you ran out.”

  “Nothing, I—”

  “Don’t, Beth,” he interrupted. “Tell me it’s none of my business, but don’t insult me with a lie.”

  Beth looked out over the pool toward the waterfall. “I don’t lie.”

  “Never?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “So what happened?”

  Her gaze, filled with so much he couldn’t decipher, locked with his. For a moment neither of them spoke. Greg braced himself not to say a word when she told him it was none of his business.

  So why did he feel it was?

  “I can’t tell you exactly what happened,” she said, her eyes steady on his. “I’m not sure I even know.”

  When he looked into those beautiful blue eyes, there was no doubting the truth of what she said. “What can you tell me?”

  “When I saw the piano… I don’t know…”

  Wanting to reach for her hand, he reached for his beer instead. “What?”

  “I used to play the piano professionally.”

  Her performance at Bonnie’s had made that rather obvious. He wanted to ask why she’d denied being a concert pianist that night at her house.

  “Seeing that piano there tonight, in the spotlight, brought it all back to me so forcefully…”

  “It’s okay,” Greg said, although he didn’t know if that was true. He didn’t know what “it” even was. What kept her so locked inside herself? Her hand lay on the table next to her wineglass, and he covered those talented fingers with his own. “After dinner at Bonnie’s you said you were starting to come out of a deep freeze. I imagine this was just more of the same. Starting to feel again. Reacting to all the particulars in your life.”

  “I guess.”

  Her brows lowered, not quite into a frown, just into a lost look that made Greg feel powerless. He was afraid of no one. But how could he fight what he didn’t know?

  “It’s just so overwhelming….” Her voice trailed off.

  There was so much more Greg needed to ask. And, just as badly, he needed her to tell him without his having to ask. He needed her to trust him.

  SHE WASN’T GOING TO SUFFOCATE. Not out here in the cool evening air. Not twice in one night. Blocking her mind to the memories that had overwhelmed her earlier, Beth wondered if she should leave.

  “You’re doing that thing with your shoulder again,” she said instead, watching as Greg rubbed ineptly at the knot that had to be tightening his trapezius.

  Just how she knew that, she had no idea. And didn’t dare investigate, either. Not at the moment.

  She’d write everything down later. All the glimmers of memory. And all the internal enemies that had attacked her that evening, rendering her virtually helpless for perhaps the most frightening half hour of her life, would get their time.

  When she was home alone, in the safety of her bedroom, she’d write everything down in her journal.

  And then would come the responsibility of trying to make sense of it. To search further and see what she knew, what she remembered.

  Until then…

  “Let me do that,” she said. Jumping up, she stood behind Greg’s chair. A couple of minutes and she could ease his suffering.

  “Right here?” she said, her hands instantly finding the knot in his upper back. Measuring its size, the exact point in the muscle where it lodged, Beth began to massage. Her fingers worked automatically, moving over Greg’s body as mindlessly as they’d moved over the piano keys a couple of weeks ago.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “that’s the spot.” His head dropped.

  Beth grinned, surmising that he must be too macho to grimace. Or say ouch. What she was doing had to hurt like hell.

  But it wouldn’t for long.

  “Deep muscle spasms, just like I thought,” she said, rubbing from the outside in.

  “Mmm.” Eventually Greg started to move with her. “That feels good.”

  “It would feel a whole lot better if you’d take off your shirt,” she said. She was used to doing this on bare skin. With the proper oils within reach.

  Beth’s fingers faltered. Where? Where was she used to doing this? On whose bare skin? And what oils were the proper ones?

  Apparently taking her limp fingers as a command, Greg slid out of his shirt. And because she didn’t know what else to d
o with that bare expanse of smooth back, she began to administer a deep-tissue massage.

  When she was done, she kept right on massaging. The waterfall, the music, the soft lighting were all part of a distant scene, a vague background, as Beth continued to use skills that belonged to a person she didn’t know.

  “You can stop now.” Greg’s voice came from far off.

  Beth kept working the musculature of his back. Sometime during the past few minutes she’d moved from his right shoulder to his left, and was now down to his latissimus dorsi.

  “I guess it probably wouldn’t do any good for me to ask where you learned to do that?” His voice sounded strained.

  Nope. No good at all. She’d already tried and there’d been no answer forthcoming.

  “Piano players have strong fingers.” Beth found herself saying the words. Thought they were words she’d heard before. Some kind of explanation for the skill she was now displaying?

  Or a defense of it?

  A concert pianist. Masseuse. Other than the obvious requirement of strong fingers, the two professions had absolutely nothing in common, as far as she could tell.

  Knotted bruise aside, Greg’s back was beautiful. The muscles textbook perfect. In placement. In size.

  And his skin…

  As her thoughts took her in unprecedented directions, Beth’s fingers worked harder. She knew one thing: she couldn’t have done this as a profession. She was far too aware of the skin beneath her fingers, far too lacking in emotional detachment, not enough professionally removed to have done this very many times.

  But then, how had she become so adept?

  WHETHER IT WAS THE BEER that made him take the chance or the adrenaline still pumping from the evening’s events, whether it was the night and water and soft music or the sheer torture of her fingers against his body, Greg didn’t know. He just quit thinking.

  Reaching back, he grabbed Beth’s burning hand, placing his palm over hers as he guided her fingers through the hair on his chest and held them against the taut pectoral muscles straining for her touch.

  Gently pulling, he brought her around until she was standing between his spread thighs.

  “I…” Her eyes were wide, filled with uncertainty.

  And with something else.

  The something else was all he saw. “Shh,” he said softly. And before she could say anything, he tugged once more, bringing her down to his lap, and covered her mouth with his.

  If she’d resisted, even for a second, he would have stopped. Could have stopped. But when Beth’s mouth opened over his, his reactions no longer seemed to be under his control. He took his time with slow, soft kisses, exploring her. Her taste. Her softness. The shape of her lips.

  Her kisses started out hesitant, though by no means resistant. But as he continued to move his mouth against hers, her response grew tantalizingly ardent. There was no doubt that Beth was a hungry woman. Hungry to be touched. To be loved.

  He forgot where they were, pretty much forgot who they were. He was thinking with his senses. Feeling her. Driven by a desire more intense than any he’d experienced before. Lost in a sensual fog.

  “Hold me.” Beth’s words pierced the fog. And then became the fog. Greg held her as close as he could. And when the chair hindered his attempts to deepen their closeness, he picked her up and carried her to the padded chaise longue she’d been lying on earlier.

  It might have been made for one person, but it accommodated two quite nicely. Greg laid Beth down and then lay down between her legs, bolstering his weight on his forearms on either side of her. Cradling her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered.

  Her tremulous smile scared him a little, and Greg bent to her lips. Doing what he knew he could do well. What he already knew she wanted.

  He kissed her.

  And kissed her again. His lips trailed to the corner of her mouth. To her chin. Onto her eyelids. Down to her neck. He had to know every part of her, had to have some kind of claim on this woman who held everything back from him.

  His groin ached with a tension far worse than he’d felt in his shoulder. Knotted and spasming and crying for attention.

  Moving his hips against hers, Greg let her know what he wanted.

  “Greg?”

  “Yeah?” His voice sounded dry, parched.

  “I want you so badly I’m aching.”

  He groaned. Ready to throw away everything he had for one night in this woman’s arms.

  With all his weight on one elbow, he caressed her side. Her neck. Burning hotter as she moved her head, eyes closed, making herself more accessible. Her gauzy top made it easy to slide his hand beneath the neckline and down, until he had one perfectly rounded breast in his palm—

  “But I can’t.”

  Greg shook his head, wondering what he’d missed. Somehow Beth’s eyes had opened, were staring straight at him.

  His hand still on her breast, he ran a mental slowdown over his body.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t do this.” She shuddered. “I want to so badly, but I can’t. Not yet. Not while I’m still trying to figure things out. It’s not fair to either of us….” Only the fact that she sounded as devastated as he felt allowed Greg to handle the situation like the man he purported to be.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Greg?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re…um…still holding my breast.”

  Damn. She was right.

  Using far more physical strength than he’d needed when capturing the drug dealer, Greg dragged himself off Beth. And then, because he didn’t trust himself not to fall down on top of her again and because he was in almost unbearable pain, he turned and dived, headfirst and fully clothed, into the swimming pool.

  Even the brutal plunge into sixty-degree water didn’t cool his ardor.

  Of one thing he was certain. Beth Allen was more than just a woman.

  She was a need.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE SUBJECT GRADY MULLINS, was ready. He sat straight and tall on the leather sofa in a private back wing of the spa, a big, athletically fit man in his late twenties. He’d shaved off his beard and cut his hair.

  Tired as he was, Dr. Peter Sterling still felt the surge of renewed energy as he took in their newest recruit. This was what people on the outside wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t that they did anything evil—or even secret—at Sterling Silver. It wasn’t that they wanted to be exclusive. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Their goal was to have everyone in the world live as they lived at Sterling Silver. Positively. Happily. Productively.

  People in the outside world just didn’t understand. But they were beginning to. Slowly. One soul at a time.

  They had another worthy soldier for the cause in Grady Mullins. All the hard work, the fatigue and the frequent loneliness were worth moments like these.

  Peter might not be able to save the world, but in his protected little corner of it, life was damn near perfect. Clean and free from hostility and negativism.

  After weeks of relaxation training, Grady had fallen into an altered state of consciousness, almost without Peter’s help.

  “Grady, you believe in Sterling Silver, don’t you?” Peter asked, his voice low as he sat facing the man who’d declared his readiness for cleansing.

  “I do. I know that the work here is right and good.”

  Peter smiled. Right and Good. That was one of several sets of key words used at Sterling Silver. Continually repeated trigger phrases that helped them all stay focused, lest they be wooed by the ways of the world.

  “Why is it right and good?”

  Grady’s eyes met his. “Today’s world is full of evil,” he said, his voice ringing with the intensity of sure knowledge. “It’s everywhere. In white-collar lives and blue, corporate structures and the ghetto. Gangs. Road rage. Terrorism. In politics. The Bible promises us that if we let evil forces—w
hich we know to be manifested in negative energy—rule our lives, they will overtake us. The only way for any of us to overcome it is to rid ourselves of the negative energy. The hostility.”

  Yes. Heart thumping, Peter nodded. He’d sensed from the very beginning that this young man would be a powerful convert. Grady’s fervor was validation for Peter’s own faith in the rightness of his work.

  Outsiders wouldn’t understand what was going to take place there that day; they would probably be horrified by the things Grady was subjecting himself to. But that was because outsiders saw only the surface. They didn’t understand the meaning, the purpose, the benefit, the motivation.

  “The Bible also promises that good will win out over evil if we make right choices. The best choice is to rid ourselves of the negative energies we were born with.”

  Grady understood. And after him, there would be more. Slowly they were reaching the world.

  “You’re sure you believe that?” Peter had to ask. Beth’s lack of faith had been disastrous. He couldn’t take a chance on having that happen again.

  “With all my heart,” Grady said, looking him straight in the eye. “I want cleansing more than anything, Dr. Sterling.”

  Peter believed him.

  “You have faith that it will work?”

  “I know that it will.”

  “My son, we’ve talked a little about the process, but there is much that you cannot know until you actually experience it. The mind is a curious thing and—given the chance—while still filled with negativity, it can take a right and good concept and turn it into something evil. We can’t risk this or we’ve lost all power to do our work. We become devoid of influence and the rituals become meaningless.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then, we shall begin.” Peter stood, anticipation filling his lower belly. “You must permit no doubt to enter your mind from this point forward. You do not question. You have to trust me completely. Negative energy does not give up easily. We have to render it powerless.” The words lost none of their ardor even as Peter repeated them for the three-hundred-and-forty-ninth time.

  Grady didn’t even hesitate. “I’m all yours, sir.”