Rowena said, resisting the temptation to pop her thumb in her mouth to cool the pain. Instead she squinted at the embossed lettering. “Deputy Cash Lawless, Whitewater Sheriff’s Office.”
“Cash? Holy sh—” Smith choked, coffee threatening to spray the papers on his desk. He thumped his chest in an obvious effort to clear his windpipe. He struggled to sober himself, but his eyes were actually watering with the effort it took. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, clearing his throat. “I didn’t realize that Deputy Lawless was the arresting officer in your case. The perpetrator you’re looking for—Mr., um, Brown—is currently awaiting transport to—”
“Death row if Cash has anything to say about it,” a rangy guy with a nose roughly the size of the Sears Tower called out, the room erupting in laughter.
“Death row?” Rowena’s stomach whirled as the Brown family’s hamster had the time her younger sister Ariel bounced Nibbles down the basement stairs in one of those clear plastic balls. “You can’t mean that!”
“Potter, you’re a real comedian.” Smith shot a quelling glare into the cluster of desks and uniformed officers. “Can’t you see the lady is upset? Hey, Cash?” he bellowed, angling his gaze in another direction. “The lady here needs to see you about that burglary you just busted up.” Shuffling, scuffling sounds came from all over the office as everyone craned to see the scene unfolding.
Applause broke out as a man stood up from the desk in the far right corner of the room, his back to Rowena and the chorus of gibes ringing out from his coworkers.
“My hero…”
“…deserves a medal for courage under fire…”
But Rowena barely heard the teasing. The business card fluttered, unheeded, from her numb fingers as she focused on the rear view of the dark-haired man who was the focus of the whole room’s attention. If Deputy Smith had reminded her of an evil castle guard, this Lawless seemed more like a general about to institute a Scorched Earth campaign and enjoy every minute of it.
Stiff shoulders stretched the back of a khaki shirt with sharp creases still ironed into the sleeves as he hung up the phone he was talking on. Dark hair cropped with almost military precision didn’t come close to reaching his collar. His well-tailored pants skimmed an ass a jeans model would envy, muscular legs seeming almost too long to be real. And clean? Her mom could do surgery on that desk of his. Rowena figured there wasn’t a speck of lint or dog hair in the world rash enough to cling to the man’s clothing. Although women would probably stand in line to take them off.
She smoothed one hand down the crinkled fabric of her peasant skirt, reminding herself she’d rumpled it on purpose as Lawless turned around to face her. Every nerve in Rowena’s body flashed an all-points bulletin: Warning—subject armed and dangerous. Do not approach.
The deputy even had warning flares of a sort emblazoned on his broad chest, Rowena gauged, his starched shirtfront splotched with vivid orange and yellow stains.
His features were harder to make out, half obscured as they were by the blue beanbag-shaped thing he clutched to the left side of his face. But she glimpsed a belligerent chin, a hawklike nose and a vein beating a very dangerous rhythm in his right temple.
“Head right on back there, Ms. Brown.” Deputy Smith gestured with his coffee cup. “Deputy Lawless will see you now.”
Rowena thanked him and started toward the far more intimidating man. Her heart raced. Deputy Lawless looked for all the world as if he was itching to shoot the place up. That is, if someone could shoot up a crowded sheriff’s office with only one working eye.
And that was all Deputy Lawless had at the moment, from what Rowena could tell. The thing on his face was an icepack. His other eye, a penetrating whiskey brown, glowered at Rowena as if she’d just ripped off the collection box for the sheriff department’s Widows and Orphans Christmas Fund.
Oh, God, Rowena thought as the man lowered the cold pack. His eye was almost swollen shut. This was not good. Clancy had really ticked this guy off. Was it possible that her Clancy had given him that shiner? No way, Rowena reassured herself quickly. Clancy might be completely out of control, but he would never hurt a flea.
Deputy Lawless crossed to a sink by a coffee station and dumped the icepack, then homed in on Rowena, his face unyielding as stone.
“Deputy Lawless.” She started to offer him her hand, then thought better of it, winding her fingers in the strap of her bag instead. “I’m Rowena Brown. I own the new pet shop in town.”
The deputy’s disapproving gaze swept from the lingerie-inspired camisole clinging to her shoulders by thin spaghetti straps to the scuffed toes of the Frye boots one of her mother’s friends had broken in at a protest march in the seventies. “I know who you are.”
He didn’t say “everybody in town does,” but Rowena could hear what he was thinking. You’re the crazy lady who claims she can read animals’ minds.
Not that she could, exactly. It was more like being a sort of matchmaker. Sensing when a certain person and a certain pet were destined for each other. And once that instinct kicked in, she had no peace until she’d settled them together. Another supposed “gift” from Auntie Maeve, inspired by the old tin-whistle tucked in the desk drawer at the pet shop.
Wouldn’t that be big fun to explain to the stone-faced man standing before her? A smear of red on the left side of his corded throat snagged her gaze. Blood? Her lungs squeezed shut. Better to get down to the crisis at hand.
“There’s been a terrible misunderstanding.” She couldn’t stop staring at his neck, terrified she’d find broken skin.
Aware of the direction of Rowena’s gaze, Lawless swiped one hand against the spot on his neck, then glanced down at his stained fingers. A muscle in his jaw knotted as he grabbed a tissue and scrubbed the color away. Thank God, Rowena thought. His skin was smooth, tanned—far too luscious looking for anybody as tightly wound as he was.
“Miss Marigold ran over to my shop the instant I got back and told me she’d called you,” Rowena continued. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. She’s flighty as a hummingbird trapped in a mason jar.”
Lawless gave the best Medusa impression Rowena had ever seen—the guy should have been able to turn her into stone with a look like that. The last thing Rowena needed was to get this man’s back up any more than it already was.
Rowena’s hand fluttered as if to sweep her too-colorful description of Marigold Pettigrew away. “What I mean to say is that Miss Marigold is very excitable.”
Lawless’s scowl chilled even further. “Most people tend to get a little upset when they hear an intruder bashing around on the first floor of their house. Even in small towns bad things can happen to women who live alone.”
Guilt elbowed Rowena as she imagined her neighbor terrified. “You’re right, of course. I’m so sorry she was upset.”
She was getting frostbite here. Lawless folded his arms over his chest. The stains on his shirt seemed as foreign to him as blacked-out teeth on Cary Grant. It looked to Rowena as if the deputy had tried to scrub out the spots peeking over those tautly muscled arms, but had given up. “By the time I got to Miss Marigold’s place, her shop was in shambles,” he said. “God knows how long it will take her to clean it up.”
Chastened,
