will spread like wildfire across Sundown. Every time you turn around someone’s going to ask how you know what you know. Where you learned your skills. Why you’re not using them. You think telling them you’ve had a couple of first aid classes is going to cut it?” He stepped closer. “Doesn’t do it for me. Don’t you know that the less you tell someone, the more they want to know?”
She jerked from his touch. “I have to pick up some things at the market for Etta before I take her lunch.”
“I’ll run with you as far as your place.”
“No.” Her face was flushed now from either the heat or emotion. Maybe both. “I told you, I prefer jogging alone.”
“What is it about cops that makes you nervous?”
Something flickered in her eyes, then was gone. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then I’ll explain. Chief Decker says when he stops by Truelove’s, you make a point to avoid him. I have to wonder why, since he’s a decent guy. You sure as hell didn’t want him to know you list ‘skilled in emergency medicine’ on your résumé. Then there’s me. I come around, I get the impression you check for running room.”
She sent him a cool smile. “Cops aren’t my favorite people. Nothing personal, McCall.”
“Sorry to hear that. Some of us can be real charming if we put our mind to it.”
“Charming men don’t impress me. Now I’ve got to go.”
He stepped forward, blocking her retreat. “I watched your face while you worked on that girl. You’re not just good at emergency medicine, you’ve got a passion for it.”
“You have no idea how I feel,” she shot back. “About anything.”
“You’re right. I have no clue what stopped you from being out there, helping people. Saving lives. Or why you’ve stuck yourself in an out-of-the-way, small-town tavern.”
“I’m not stuck. I tend bar now.” Her hands clenched. “That’s what I do. What I want to do. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Didn’t say there was.” He dipped his head. “I don’t know you well enough to have you figured out. Yet. But Etta does—or thinks she does. She cares about you. Her feelings matter to me. If whatever is going on with you harms her, you’ll have me to deal with.”
Her eyes went hot. “I love Etta. She gave me a job, a place to live. I owe her. I would never hurt her.”
“I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t just take your word for it. I intend to keep an eye on you.”
“Do it from a distance.” He saw the tremor in the hand she used to shove her bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t want to jog with you, McCall. I don’t want to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner with you. Is that clear?”
He kept his eyes cool and steady on her face. “Crystal.”
“Fine. So please leave me the hell alone.”
He watched her dash toward the road, her tanned legs pumping, ponytail bouncing.
“Not a chance, sweetheart,” he murmured.
Chapter 4
Five minutes into that evening’s shift, Regan knew Josh McCall’s prediction had been right—word of what happened that morning had spread like a wildfire across Sundown. Every customer seated at the bar had commented on the accident and her part in aiding the teenage victims. Even the pair of grizzled regulars whose usual topic of conversation was the catch of the day had shifted their focus to the wreck at Wipeout Curve.
While she poured drinks, washed glasses and filled bowls with peanuts, Regan had made sure to shrug intermittently and comment she’d taken a few first aid classes. That had satisfied some of the questioners. Others had given her a skeptical look, but hadn’t pushed for additional details.
At two hours before closing time, most of the talk had shifted to which fisherman had racked up the most points so far in Paradise Lake’s fishing derby. That, and the fact McCall hadn’t darkened the tavern’s doorstep, had Regan hoping she’d weathered the storm. If she could just fade back into obscurity and keep her distance from McCall for however long he spent in Sundown, her luck might hold.
That feeble hope went up in flames when Burns Yost, owner of the Sundown Sentinel, settled onto a stool at the bar.
“I need a beer and an interview, Regan.”
Icy panic jabbed through her while the balding, middle-aged man pulled a pen and small notebook from the pocket of his gray shirt. Yost had been only second to the police chief in people she’d made a point to avoid during her six months in Sundown. Especially after Etta told her Yost had once been an investigative reporter for a major newspaper and had gained fame by sniffing out a huge corruption-at-the-Pentagon story. A few years later, Yost had been fired when a high-profile exposé of his turned out to be fraudulent. He’d come home to Sundown and bought the Sentinel.
As far as Regan was concerned, a reporter was a reporter, no matter what was in his past. And this one apparently smelled a story.
She filled a frosted mug, set it in front of him. “Here’s your beer. You want one of Howie’s hamburgers to go along with that?”
“No, I want to interview you about what you did today.”
“I witnessed an accident and watched a young girl die, Mr. Yost. That’s not something I want to talk about.”
“Amelia’s death was unfortunate,” Yost said over the clatter of pool balls, loud talk and blare of a boot-scootin’ boogie from the jukebox. “I’ve just come from her grandparents’ house and they’re beyond grief.” He sipped his beer. “When I told them I planned to interview you, they asked me to give you their thanks for helping Amelia.”
“I did what anyone else who’d taken a few first aid classes would have done.”
Yost’s mouth curved. “I also talked to Helen and Quentin Peterson. They’re the couple who stopped at the wreck the same time as you and Josh McCall. The Petersons think you’re a doctor.”
“People tend to get impressed when someone checks a pulse while tossing out a few medical terms. That doesn’t mean they have M.D. after their name.”
“Okay, so you’re not a doctor. What are you?”
“A bartender.”
“That’s what Josh McCall said.”
The bands around her chest tightened. “You interviewed McCall?”
“Tried to. He wouldn’t even invite me in, just stood on his front porch sipping a beer and saying the same thing as you. He doesn’t want to talk about the young girl who died.”
For an instant Regan was back in that twisted, glass-strewn car with Josh, working feverishly to save Amelia. And when the girl died, Regan had looked into his dark eyes and felt a connection snap into place. A searing, wrenching link. Now, it wasn’t just her body reacting
