the windshield she caught sight of the Reno Center for Children as it whizzed by, lights out for the night. Then they pulled up to the sheriff’s office, where the lamp was always burning.
He set the brake on the car and cut the ignition, turning to shoot a miffed gaze her way. And, in the car’s dim light, she saw what he’d been hiding at Emma Trainor’s.
Eyes the dead-hazel shade of desolation, like the muted colors of a predawn day when nothing stirs, nothing lives.
Sam Reno was hurting, no doubt about it.
Chapter Two
In the sterile light of the sheriff’s office, Ashlyn noticed that Sam echoed the faded colors of a Remington painting, as well—the dusty oranges, browns and blues that spoke of still life and times gone by.
He led her to a seat in front of his hardwood desk, the top resembling a desert landscape with a minimum of papers and clutter. Well, if she had a desk in this place, it’d look like that, too, she supposed. All the sheriff of Kane’s Crossing usually did was baby-sit drunks and chase around Spencer’s wayward daughter anyway. The town hadn’t seen any major action since… Her heart took a swan dive.
Since Sam’s father had died in her family’s factory.
As he sat at his desk and shucked off the jacket, she noticed that his badge had rusted around the edges.
He leaned back in his chair, propping his boots on the desk, reclining his head into his hands, surveying her with detachment. “Ashlyn Spencer, I don’t know what the hell to do with you. Trespassing is illegal, no matter how honorable your intentions are.”
She started to correct his assumption about her being a good person, but was cut off.
“Lock her up,” rasped an inebriated entity from around the corner and in the back, where the holding cells were kept.
Ashlyn recognized the voice. “Not your business, Junior.”
From the deputy’s desk, the scanner came to life, putting in its two cents with an explosion of static.
Unfazed, Sam kept his gaze on Ashlyn. “I guess I could put you behind bars with Junior Crabbe, just for the fun of it.”
She couldn’t help her tart smile. “Definitely my idea of Shangri-la, Sheriff.”
Junior Crabbe and his absent Siamese trouble twin, Sonny Jenks, had hung around her brother in their younger years. They were the bane of every peace-loving citizen’s existence with their frequent drinking, brawling and carousing.
Problem was, she thought the sheriff just might put her in a cell with Junior. For fun. To teach her a lesson. To make up for the loss of Sam’s father. Whatever the reason, she deserved it for her stubbornness.
Would that ever blow her father’s top.
A whoosh of frigid air shivered over her back as the door burst open. She turned to see the new deputy, Gary Joanson, struggle in under the weight of another drunk, Sonny Jenks.
Gary’s voice reflected his strain. “Evenin’, Ashlyn. Sheriff.”
“Joanson,” said the sheriff, nodding a greeting, still eyeing his own problem for the night.
Gary, just a speck of a man, dragged the burly Sonny Jenks down the hall, where a happy Junior Crabbe’s rebel yell greeted his buddy. Cries of “Traitor!” preceded the clank of jail bars, reflecting how Gary had befriended Nick Cassidy last year and turned against his bully-brained cronies.
Ashlyn was growing nervous under the sheriff’s stare. She absently fingered her necklace, a piece of her own creation that, at times, pricked her skin with the edges of its incomplete circles.
“So,” she said, wishing she could relieve the tension that had settled over the room, “aren’t you glad to be back in Kane’s Crossing?”
His face was expressionless. “Some days more than others.”
Ashlyn slid her elbows onto the desk, one hand nestled under her chin as she smiled at him. “From what I hear, Meg Cassidy is making a lot of her blueberry ‘boyfriend’ pies over at the bakery.”
“Meaning what?” He lowered his arms, sat forward in his chair.
Tread carefully. She didn’t know him well enough to be flirting like this, but what did she have to lose? Maybe she could even talk her way out of trouble if she said the right words. “You know your sister-in-law and all the gossip about her baking. Eat an angel food cake of hers, you’ll get married. Eat her chocolate cake, you’ll get pregnant. I’m just saying she’s been making a lot of blueberry pies since you came to town.”
The sheriff didn’t even bother to comment, just suddenly became very preoccupied with a slim pile of papers on the corner of his desk. “How thick is your file here in the sheriff’s office, Ashlyn?”
“Pretty huge.” Maybe some flattery would be useful right about now. “At any rate, since you became sheriff, women have been experiencing all sorts of emergencies in town, haven’t they? False alarms, cookies that need to be eaten…”
His face got ruddy at this comment. Ashlyn decided to lean back in her chair, to put a cork in the cake conversation. This was obviously not a man who preened under the onslaught of compliments.
She recalled when his foster brother, Nick, had first come back to town, how he’d rarely smiled, either. But Meg, his wife, sure had him smiling now. Nick had fallen in love with Meg’s surefire optimism and sense of self-worth. They were the happiest married people Ashlyn had ever seen.
She watched Sheriff Reno simmer down as he stood and ambled to the file cabinet. Ever so slowly, as if he had all the time in the world at his disposal, he thumbed through the manila folders, retrieving a War and Peace-thick collection. He tossed it onto the desk, the file thumping in her ears like a slap upside the head.
“Mine?” she asked, pointing at the folder.
“All fifty pounds of it. I have to admire your perseverance, I suppose.”
She poked at it, remembering the contents without even having to look. Wait until he saw how idiot-stupid she could be. When it came to making her father angry, she was a very creative camper. Everything from decorating the factory’s outside wall with pictures symbolizing workers’ rights, to hiring a neighboring county’s high school band to march in Spencer High’s homecoming parade playing Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Unfortunately, Horatio Spencer had appreciated none of this.
As she looked into Sam Reno’s lifeless gaze, she saw a reflection, a young girl who needed to grow up, to let go of this bitterness she’d lived with since the age of seven, to get past her “bad girl” reputation and make a new life for herself.
She sat back in her chair, hands folded in her lap, head down. “I won’t make your job harder than it needs to be.”
“Thank you,” he said, his voice wry enough to make her wonder if he was kidding.
She glanced at him, but he was still expressionless.
He continued. “Town
