driver’s eyes froze over a little, and the hot little prickles underneath the surface of her skin turned as cold as the air seeping through her too-thin jacket.
Of course the man was staring at her. Undoubtedly wishing he’d never had the misfortune to drive anywhere near Lucius, Montana, or her.
The best-looking guy she’d ever seen in her entire life—on television, the movies or in her imagination—and her brother was gearing up to arrest him.
Chapter Two
Bring him in?
It wasn’t often that Dane didn’t get what he wanted. But right now, he’d hit the trifecta in that regard. Judging by the sheriff’s implacable expression, Dane was not going to get out of the delightful experience of some Podunk little sheriff’s office. He was not going to be driving the one-of-a-kind Shelby he’d picked up at auction to his friend, Wood, when his task in Montana was done.
Not anytime soon, anyway. The wreck of Wood’s car was even now being hauled away.
And third, the woman—Hadley—might be the prettiest female he’d encountered in a long while, but she looked like she’d jump out of her skin if a rabbit so much as looked at her.
Dane Rutherford was no rabbit. He liked to look and touch.
He’d be doing neither.
“If you’re going to impound the car, there’s not much I can do to stop you,” he told the sheriff. Not much, yet. “But you probably realize that it’s in your sister’s best interest that we each take care of our own damages.” He pulled out his money clip and heard Hadley’s soft inhalation.
The sheriff’s expression didn’t change much, though his gaze focused on the folded bills in Dane’s hand. “Hadley,” he said without looking at her. “Does your truck still run?”
The woman cast a wary look at Dane, her gaze going in a little triangle between the money, the sheriff’s face and Dane. “I don’t know.”
“Try it. If it does, drive it into town,” the sheriff said flatly. “Meet us at the station.”
Her soft lips compressed. Even with her nose all pink from the cold, she had the kind of face a man could look at for a while. A long while. “Shane, come on. You’re not really—”
“Go.”
She looked up at Dane again, her expression seeming apologetic. Rightfully so, he reminded himself, given her terrible driving.
“Hadley.” The sheriff’s voice was warning.
She exhaled abruptly and turned on her heel, stomping across the highway to the decrepit truck, her slender hips swaying beneath the short pink excuse of a jacket she wore. She climbed up in the cab, ground the gears a few times as she disconnected the truck from the mangled mileage marker, and lumbered off down the road, leaving behind a puff of exhaust.
When Dane looked back at the sheriff, he knew the other man was perfectly aware of where Dane’s attention had been.
“Now, then. You want to finish the bribe it looks like you’re gearing up to offer, or do you want to tell me what’s really going on here?”
Hadley grumbled under her breath as she coaxed her ailing pickup truck all the way into town. She pulled into the lot beside Stu’s garage and gathered up all the items that were still strewn across the seat, replacing them in her purse. Then she went into the small office that her brother used when he was in town working at the garage. Some might have thought it odd that Stu Golightly was a rancher and ran the town’s only auto-body and repair shop. Personally, she considered it a great convenience. And the darned man better not have the nerve to bill her for the repairs, either, since it was his own fault she’d been so preoccupied.
The tow truck bearing the crumpled old convertible was parked near the closed bay door, and she carefully looked away from the wreckage and went inside.
It was nearly quitting time, but Riva was still sitting behind the counter painting her fingernails a putrid shade of blue and didn’t even look up until Hadley plopped her keys next to the woman’s splayed fingers.
Riva popped her gum, her penciled-in eyebrows lifting. She was seventy if she was a day, but that didn’t stop Riva from keeping “fashionable,” as she called it.
“Guess you had a little problem today,” she observed. “What’d you hit?”
Hadley told her. “I’m afraid Stu will be busy with that old car there first, though.”
Riva cackled at that and nodded her bright-pink head. “That he will. Your brother’s gonna wet his pants when he gets a chance to work on a piece of heaven like that. You probably oughta just go talk to your insurance agent about the claim now. Won’t be pretty, I expect.”
“Actually, we’re handling our own damages,” Hadley said, mentally crossing her fingers that this would still be the case. Unless her stubborn brother made Wood mad enough to rescind the offer.
Atwood Tolliver. That definitely could not be the name of a car thief, right? It sounded so old-fashioned. So upstanding. And the man himself had seemed so… so—
“You going to stand there and daydream all day?” Riva’s voice finally penetrated, and Hadley flushed a little, marshaling her thoughts. “Heard that you pulled right in front of him out near Stu’s place.”
“Nothing like the Lucius grapevine to get the word spread,” Hadley murmured.
“So why’s he willing to pay his own damages on a car like that?”
Hadley looked over her shoulder, through the somewhat grimy window to the tow truck outside.
“Like what? That car’s even older than my pickup.”
Riva snapped her gum and shook her head. “Honey, it is a mystery to me how you can have a brother who knows cars the way he does, and be as oblivious as you are.” She poked her nail polish brush back into the bottle, drew out a fresh batch of blue and slid it over her half-inch long nails. “That’s a ’68 Shelby GT500 convertible. It won’t be cheap to fix.”
Hadley looked again out the window. Down the street a ways, Shane’s SUV had pulled to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office. “It’s valuable then?” Her voice sounded too weak for her liking, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Besides, she’d known Riva since she was barely out of kindergarten.
“Think they only made 500 or so of them.”
Oh. Dear. Hadley’s stomach sank. No wonder her brother was leery of Wood. “Shane wanted me to meet him at his office. Guess I’d better go.”
Riva looked up at her after she just stood there, though. “Might help some if you open the door, child, and actually move your feet in the right direction.”
Hadley smiled weakly and went back out into the late afternoon. Her boots dragged a little as she passed the tow truck. She eyed the lines of the vehicle. Okay, so it was kind of a sexy old car….
If it hadn’t been crumpled
