didn’t care.
Her last shreds of hope, already as brown and brittle as fallen leaves, disintegrated into crumbled bits of nothing. Whatever had happened to change Luke into a stranger, it was clear now that his return had come too late for both of them.
Sophie closed her hand around his license and other papers and reached for the radio mike, intending to have him run through the computer for additional outstanding warrants. He’d changed immeasurably. It was possible that he was a fugitive wanted in six states other than Wyoming.
“YOU DO REALIZE that you were speeding when you drove through town,” Sophie said in her curiously toneless voice, tipping up her chin to glare at him from beneath the flat brim of her trooper hat. “I’m going to issue you a citation.”
“A fine welcome,” Luke said, flippant, uncaring.
Her eyes narrowed. “By your own choice.”
She was different…yet the same. Little Sophie Ryan, with the tough-girl attitude that would forever be betrayed by her Cupid’s-bow mouth, the girlish sweep of her lashes and rampant curls the color of butter-brickle ice cream. At the same time she was strangely alien to him in her police uniform with its stained shirtfront and the badge on the pocket and the holstered gun she kept touching as though it were a lucky rabbit’s foot.
Did he scare her?
The thought disturbed him. Her betrayal being what it was—a knife in the gut no matter how many years had passed—he still didn’t care to come across as the kind of man she had to fear. He knew Sophie’s heart. So tender and damaged. Intimidation wasn’t his game.
What was hers?
She licked her lips, a nervous reaction he remembered well. She’d licked her lips, her eyes like saucers, the day he’d asked if she wanted to take a ride on his bike. She’d been barely sixteen, too young and uncertain to be as jaded as she’d put on. Straight off, he’d seen beyond her cocky attitude to the wounded psyche of a girl who was as untethered and searching as he.
“Can you step over to the patrol car, sir?”
Punch seemed anxious. “Hey, now, Soph—”
“No problem,” Luke said, holding up his hands and walking away with Sophie cautiously trailing him. He couldn’t see her expression very well because of the hat, but he could feel the worry and confusion—and maybe attraction—emanating from her. He responded with equally mixed emotions in spite of their past, to such a degree he began to wonder if he’d sped through town in order to attract Deputy Ryan’s attention. Of course he hadn’t known she’d be on patrol, but just the same…
Apparently, a man could hope even when he knew there was no logic to it.
“Place your hands on the hood,” she directed. Her boot nudged his. “Spread ’em.”
Luke knew the stance. The command amused him, coming from Sophie’s baby-doll lips. Without even trying, he remembered the taste of her mouth, the velvet stroke of her tongue. The clarity of the memory was agonizing. Shouldn’t he have forgotten by now?
“What is this?” Punch blustered. “C’mon, you can’t—”
Luke chuckled mirthlessly. “Deputy Sophie’s arresting me, Punch. Don’t interrupt a woman at work.”
Sophie gave him an abrupt shove between the shoulder blades. “Funny guy,” she said, and started patting him down. She was efficient about it, but the effect her hands had on him as they ran over his body was anything but professional. Through his swift arousal, he felt her fingers slip into his back pocket. A small sound followed—the snick of his knife opening.
He looked over his shoulder. Sophie’s left hand tightened on the back of his belt as she held out the knife, the silver blade flashing in the sunshine. She hesitated for a moment, saying nothing, her eyes accusing him.
The corners of his mouth twitched at the thought of her considering him a dangerous character. “A trinket,” he said with a shrug.
She pocketed the knife. Gave him another shove. “I called in your license, Mr. Salinger. There are no outstanding out-of-state warrants on you.” The back of her hands ran lightly over his legs, down, then up the insides, skimming across his thighs. After an infinitesimal hesitation, she cupped his crotch, her fingers skimming for a weapon. The intimate touch lasted for only a split second, but in that one tick of a moment his response leapt at the speed of light. Fire shot to his groin, producing a slight twitch, a thickening rush of desire. She gave a small gasp and pulled her hand away, her cheeks flaring as pink as the cotton candy he’d once fed her at the county fair.
“Yeah, aside from the one nasty breaking and entering charge, I’ve been a very good boy.” His voice was rough, mocking, certain that Sophie’s reaction to his old arrest would be as cold as a bucket of ice water. He needed to douse the fire between them right now. Or, heaven help him, jail would seem like a reasonable alternative.
“You’re not getting off so easy this time,” she snapped with frigid precision. He silently complied when she jerked his arms behind his back and clamped a hard metal bracelet around his wrist. “You forget. There’s more than one charge. Add vandalism, arson and evading arrest and you’re looking at a nice stay in the state pen, Mr. Salinger.”
“Neither the Salingers nor the Lucases do hard time,” he pointed out with fake good humor, which seemed to make her even colder and angrier. “When push comes to shove, they bribe the judge.”
She yanked at his wrist and clicked the other handcuff into place. “Judge Cobb retired. We’ll see if Judge Entwhistle is as lenient.”
“Aw, Soph—handcuffs? Do you really need handcuffs?” Punch spread his upturned palms. “This is Maverick—you remember Maverick. Hell, you and him used to be—”
“Old news,” Sophie said. “If Mr. Salinger didn’t want to be arrested he shouldn’t have come back to a town where there are charges against him on the books. I’m just doing my job.”
“Man, when did you get to be such a hard-ass?” Punch complained. “Shucks, girl, you used to ride with the Mustangs! We don’t turn on one of our own.”
“All that was a long time ago,” Sophie said. She stole a quick look at Luke. “Things have changed.”
Not as much as either of them might have wanted. He thought of the fleeting touch of her hand between his legs. And his instantaneous reaction.
“Everything’s changed,” she added under her breath.
In the shadow of the hat brim, her eyes were large and liquid, betraying a modicum of shyness despite her position of authority. There was still a beguiling air of innocent femininity about her.
Only the appearance of it, Luke reminded himself, trying again to be ruthless.
He scowled, unable to reconcile his memories of the teenage Sophie with both the woman she was now and all that he’d been told of her since he’d skipped town. Fourteen years was too immense a span to leap when doubts were nipping at his heels.
One question was clanging inside his head. What if he’d been wrong about her?
Sophie
