up, she folded the kitchen towel, left it on the minuscule counter and walked back to the main room and her desk.
She was just going to have to—
Her thoughts abruptly came to a screeching halt and then went up in smoke just as her heart went into double time.
Cash was standing, bigger than life, right there in the middle of the sheriff’s office.
And right in front of her.
Chapter Two
“Hey, Alma, look who I just found walking by our office,” Larry called out. It became apparent that the blond-haired deputy had snagged Cash and brought him in, thinking perhaps that he was doing a good deed. “The city-slicker lawyer is finally paying the country mice back home a visit.” Larry chuckled at his own display of wit. It was a given around the office that he was always his own best audience. “How’s it going, Cash?” he asked, pumping Cash’s hand. “Any of those fancy ladies in Los Angeles manage to lasso you yet?”
“It’s going well,” Cash replied mechanically. “And no, they haven’t.” He wasn’t looking at Larry when he answered. He was looking at Alma.
And she seemed to be looking into his soul.
That was what he used to say to her, that she was his soul. It was a play on her name, which meant “soul” in Spanish. But, even so, back then, he’d meant it. He’d really felt as if she was his soul. His beginning, his ending.
His everything.
In that last summer, during the space between graduation and his going off to college on the West Coast, no one was more surprised than he was when he found himself falling for her. Really falling for her. They had grown up together. When he and his mother had come to live with his grandfather, he’d been seven years old, and after a while, it felt as if he had always lived here and always known the Rodriguez kids.
Hardly a day went by that he and Alma didn’t see each other, play with each other. Fight with each other. He was friends with her brothers, especially Eli and Gabe, and she always found a way to tag along, no matter how hard he and her brothers initially tried to ditch her.
It seemed that the more they tried, the harder she was to get rid of. Back then, he’d thought of her as a royal pain in the butt. He couldn’t remember exactly when all that had changed, but it had. Slowly, she became his friend, then his confidante, and then, ever so gradually, his best friend.
And finally, his first love.
Now that he thought about it, Alma had been part of his every day.
Until he left for college.
He’d left to make a future for himself and for her. That was what he’d told himself, what he’d believed. But somewhere along the line, he’d let himself get caught up with the newness and of life in a major city like Los Angeles. He was the country boy who hailed from a speck on the map and he wanted to be as polished, as sophisticated as the students he saw around him in his classes.
Still, in the beginning, while he was still homesick, he looked forward to Alma’s letters. He devoured them like a starving man devoured every last morsel of a meal.
But he soon discovered that his tall, blond good looks and Southern accent attracted more than just a handful of women. Male students befriended him, wanting him to be their wingman, their “chick magnet.” And female students just wanted him.
After a while, Cash forgot to answer Alma’s letters. And then he forgot to read them. He told himself he was too busy studying for exams, but the truth was that he’d been too busy cramming as much life as he could into his existence. It was as if he’d felt compelled to make up for lost time.
He had still studied hard, but every weekend saw him partying equally hard, each time with a different girl. That way it couldn’t be construed as anything serious and the tiny part of him that still had a conscience argued that he wasn’t being unfaithful to Alma.
Cash told himself that he was just becoming a more rounded person. He was socializing and making connections that would help his future once he became a lawyer.
Instead, it made him, Cash now realized, as incredibly shallow as the people with whom he socialized.
It had been a hell of a ride, though. Somehow, despite all his frantic partying, he wound up graduating near the top of his class. Offers came in from major law firms to intern with them. He made up his mind quickly. He picked the firm with the highest profile, one that dealt in criminal defense cases.
Once on board, he dedicated himself to becoming the best damn intern Jeffers, Wells, Baumann & Fields had ever had in their one-hundred-and-three-year history. He achieved his goal, rising through the ranks faster than any of the partners who had come before him and were now firmly entrenched in the organization.
And all through his rise, there’d been victories and accolades. And women. Many, many women whose names and faces now seemed to run together.
Somewhere along the line, he didn’t know just when, he’d managed to lose his soul without realizing it. It hadn’t really bothered him very much.
Until that horrible day when everything just blew apart.
All this went through his head in a nanosecond as he stood, looking at Alma, too hollow to even ache. “So how are you, Alma?” he asked quietly.
It almost didn’t sound like Cash. Had she ever known this man? Or had she just imagined it all?
“I’m fine,” she answered politely. Then, because the silence felt awkward, she added, “Your grandfather mentioned you were coming, but I didn’t expect to see you until just before the wedding.”
She didn’t tell him that Harry had gone out of his way to tell her—to prepare her—and that she’d dropped the glass she’d been holding, breaking it on the diner’s counter when she was given the news.
Cash had initially toyed with the idea of waiting until just before the big day, but he knew that if he waited until then, he might not be able to come at all. By then, the despair that held him captive, that ate away at him daily, might have grown too large for him to handle.
But all this was darkness he wasn’t about to share. It was his cross to bear, no one else’s.
So instead, he shrugged in response to her words and said, “I had a little extra vacation time coming to me. I thought I might just come early and catch up on things I’ve let slip away.”
Just like that, huh? You come sashaying back and we’re all supposed to put on some kind of show for you, is that it?
“Good luck with that,” she heard herself saying. With that, she walked past him, deliberately avoiding making contact with his eyes.
His voice followed her. Surrounded her. “My grandfather told me you became a deputy sheriff.”
She turned around. Considering that she was wearing the same khaki shirt and pants that the three men in the office had on, it would have been hard to make any other conclusion.
“I did.”
