took his hand and stood, noticing he was only a few inches taller than her as she balanced on the one boot. “Can I buy you a drink, Sheriff, to say thank you?”
“No, thanks.”
He hadn’t turned loose of her fingers, and she wondered if she should ask for her hand back. When she looked down, she spotted the blue toe of her other blue cowboy boot and squealed as she jerked her hand away from him. She dropped to the floor so she could crawl under the card table that served as her dressing table.
He tried to step out of the way, but her bottom bumped into him several times before she backed out from under the flimsy table. Then she hopped around trying to tug on the second boot while accidentally bumping into him again.
He gripped her waist and steadied her as she finally got the boot on.
When she straightened, he let go of her, but one hand rose to brush her hair from her face.
“You have a mass of long hair, pretty lady. It seems to fly around you like a midnight cloud. I’ve got a daughter who has hair as long as yours, but hers is straight and the color of sunshine.”
“Sorry.” She shook her head back. “My hair’s always had a mind of its own. I not only kicked you while I was trying to pull on the boot, you probably got a mouthful of curls.”
“I’ll survive.” He laughed.
“Sure you won’t take that drink? I feel like I owe you one, Sheriff.”
“No, but I might let you buy me lunch. The best Mexican food place for a hundred miles around is right across the street.”
Brandi wasn’t looking to be picked up, and she couldn’t tell if the sheriff was trying to start something. If so, he was so far out of practice with this switch from a drink to lunch thing. She needed to cut this off quick. “Wouldn’t you rather go home and have lunch with your family?” The last thing she needed was to get involved with a married man.
He hesitated but didn’t back away like a man who’d been trying to flirt might. “My wife left me twenty years ago, and my daughter is grown and now lives in Dallas. If you don’t want to come along, I’m still planning on eating Mexican food. Pearly, my secretary, told me to eat lunch before I came back, and she’s not an easy woman to cross.”
Brandi felt like a fool. The sheriff wasn’t using a line on her. If he thought he was, it came pretty close to the worst one she’d ever heard. He’d given her the facts of his life as small-town people did. As people who have nothing to hide did.
“My name’s Brandi Malone.”
“I guessed that. Saw it on the board out front.” He backed a few steps to the door. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Malone. Maybe I’ll come hear you sing sometime.”
“Do that,” she said, noticing neither bothered with goodbye.
After he disappeared, she decided that the sheriff was shy. She’d embarrassed him by insinuating that he was trying to flirt, or maybe he felt like he’d dumped too much information on a total stranger.
She dug through her pile of clothes and pulled on her leather jacket with fringe. It wasn’t warm enough for today’s weather, but she didn’t have time to find another coat.
Five minutes later she stepped out of the Nowhere and walked across the street. One car, the sheriff’s cruiser, was in the café’s parking lot. The lunch run was long past being over. She wasn’t surprised he’d kept to his word.
Brandi was shivering when she made it to the table in the back where he sat alone. “This place still open?” she asked.
He looked up from his cell phone. She caught the surprise in his eyes before he glanced away.
“I’m buying your lunch, Sheriff. You have a problem with that?”
“No.” He stood and moved his hat off the empty chair. “You think you could call me Dan? I don’t think of myself as on duty while I’m eating.”
She slowly slipped into the place across from him and stared at the menu. Most men, including her father, were liars or manipulators. But this one had something about him that said he could be trusted, at least as long as lunch, anyway. All she had to figure out was if Sheriff Dan Brigman was what he seemed. Not that she planned to stay around long, but at least if those honest eyes were true, she might start to believe in people again.
It might be fun to eat a meal with someone for a change. She could pretend to be happy, and interested and normal.
She glanced at the menu for a few seconds more, then ordered the lunch special when the waitress appeared. The girl looked tired, or maybe bored, and wasn’t overly concerned with the last two customers in the place.
When the waitress went back through the kitchen door before it stopped swinging from her arrival, Brandi was suddenly aware that she was alone with the sheriff.
“You look exactly like the woman I pictured would be wearing that boot,” he said, as if trying to start a conversation.
“How’s that?”
“Wild and free. Beautiful.” He glanced down, twirling a chip in the tiny bowl of hot sauce.
There was that shy smile again, she thought. Another hint that the sheriff might be one of the real people in this world of marionettes. “You don’t mind if I’m wild, do you? I’d think a thing like that might make a sheriff nervous.”
“Nope. I don’t mind. You’re the kind of beautiful that could haunt a man’s dreams, Brandi Malone. Being wild just adds spice to perfection.”
No one had said such a nice thing to her in years. He seemed to be seeing her as she wanted to be. Wild and free, she almost whispered aloud.
To prove him right, Brandi leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.
When she pulled away she whispered, “You taste like salsa, Sheriff.”
He just stared, and she swore she could be hypnotized by those steel-blue eyes.
Brandi ate one of his chips dipped in the hot sauce, then took a drink of his iced tea. He just kept watching her. No one had accused her of being wild and free for years, and she loved it. She loved the version of herself she saw in his eyes.
She glanced around the empty café. The lone waitress was probably in the back warming up the last two specials. “Aren’t you going to say something about me kissing you?”
He leaned back and spoke so low even if people had been at the next table they wouldn’t have heard. “I wouldn’t mind if you decided to do that again.”
Before she could decide, the waitress swung through the kitchen door with two plates of enchiladas.
“Maybe later.” She grinned like the wild woman he thought she was. “If I’m still around and you’re still available.” After all, how much harm could one more kiss do?
As they ate, the sheriff asked her where she was from and how she ended up at the Nowhere Club.
She
