everyone’s reach.
She’d failed miserably. Apparently so had he.
She went into the living room, to the leather chair-and-a-half that was obviously Reese’s favorite seat. The remote control and the TV schedule were on the side table, and the shade of the lamp there was tilted slightly to provide better light for reading. After kicking off her shoes, she sat and folded her legs on the seat beside her, turned on the television, then realized with a grimace that she still wore her flower-bedecked straw hat. She pulled it off and tossed it on the matching ottoman, then concentrated on finding something to watch on TV.
Reese came to an abrupt stop just through the doorway when she removed the hat to reveal her hair—or what was left of it. Nine years ago it had reached past her waist. For court she’d worn it in a prim-and-proper bun at her nape. One of his greatest pleasures had been removing every one of the pins that had held it in place, letting the cool silky strands fall over his hands, over her body, then kissing those strands back into some bit of order.
He doubted there was a single hair on her head longer than a few inches now.
Forcing himself to move naturally, he sat on the sofa. “Let’s get the rules straight. You can’t go outside. You can’t answer the phone. You can’t answer the door. If someone comes over, go to the guest room, close the door and stay there. If Jace doesn’t have a new place for you by tomorrow, you’re going to the Canyon County jail over in Buffalo Plains.”
Her gaze narrowed, and he felt a twinge of guilt. He wasn’t in the habit of locking up crime victims, but these were special circumstances that required extraordinary measures. Besides, as jails went, Canyon County’s wasn’t bad. It was located in the basement of the county courthouse, which was about eighty years old, solidly built of sandstone and just about the safest place in town in tornado season. She would likely be the only woman in the section designated for female inmates, and she could have a few amenities such as TV and real food.
“I’ve taken the liberty of removing the phone from the kitchen so you won’t be tempted to call anyone, and the alarm system is set, so don’t try to sneak out. If you have any thoughts of using my computer, surfing the Internet or sending an e-mail to someone—” he followed her gaze to the computer, its monitor displaying a brightly colored screen saver of tropical fish “—just know that everything’s password-protected. You won’t get far.”
The chagrin that crossed her face left him with little doubt that using the computer had crossed her mind. Would she have been foolish enough to tell someone where she was—her sisters, her mother, whatever man she was seeing?
That last thought left him feeling decidedly annoyed—with her, with himself, with the mystery man. Of course there were men in her life. She was a beautiful woman with a healthy appreciation for sex and, as Jace had pointed out, it had been nine years. He’d had more than his share of women in those years, which was nobody’s business but his and theirs, and her affairs were none of his business. Not worth caring about, sure as hell not worth getting annoyed about.
“Any questions?”
She shook her head, and did little more than ruffle her bangs.
He gave himself a silent command to stand up and walk out of the room, to say nothing else, to put her out of his mind for the moment. He managed the standing-up part, but not the rest. The question just popped out on its own. “What the hell happened to your hair?”
She didn’t touch it self-consciously, which suggested that she’d worn it short a long time. She simply shrugged. “I went through a period a while back when I didn’t have much use of my right shoulder and arm. Taking care of long hair was a problem, so I chopped it off.”
Heat flooded his face and sent an edgy shudder down his spine. She was talking about the incident in Thomasville, when she’d gotten caught in the cross fire between an unstable client and a half dozen enraged deputies—the incident that had ended their relationship once and for all, that had haunted him for years afterward. He’d lost so much that day, and it was her fault. Yet she could talk about it so casually, as if it were no big deal. A woman had died, their affair had died—hell, sometimes he’d felt as if he were dying. But, hey, it was all in the past, over and done with.
She was waiting for him to say something, her fake-innocent brown gaze fixed on his face. He didn’t know what she wanted—an acknowledgment of what had happened? An inquiry into her recovery? An explanation? An apology? Whatever she wanted, he offered nothing. He simply circled the couch and returned to the kitchen…but not before catching a glimpse of the disappointment that darkened her eyes.
As if he cared, after all that had happened, if she was disappointed in him.
After putting the dishes in the dishwasher, he used the cell phone to check in with his office. It had been an average day—a few arrests, a couple of burglaries, enough traffic stops to pay the department salaries for the day. He told the undersheriff he wouldn’t be in the next day, brushed off the questions about why, and ended the call.
It was barely four o’clock and he felt like a prisoner in his own home. The sounds of a daytime talk show came from the living room, one he wouldn’t be caught dead watching. There was no cleaning to do, no groceries to buy, no laundry to wash. He’d been pretty damn industrious yesterday, which he wouldn’t have been had he known he would be stuck at home baby-sitting Neely today. Other than mowing, there was nothing to do, and he wasn’t sure he trusted her enough to leave her alone inside while he was outside.
Restlessly he gazed around the kitchen, then noticed the flashing light on the answering machine. He hit the playback button, then impatiently drummed his fingers on the counter until the first message started.
“Hi, Reese, it’s Shay. I just wanted to remind you about dinner tonight. The dispatcher said you’d taken the day off unexpectedly. You’d better not be planning to stand me up, and if you do, you’d better have a real good excuse. See you.”
He muttered a curse. He’d completely forgotten the invitation to have dinner with Shay Rafferty and her husband Easy tonight. They would be more than happy for him to bring Neely along, and she would be as safe at their place out in the country as she was here, but Shay knew him too well. She would want explanations he wasn’t about to make, and when she couldn’t get them from him, she would charm them out of Neely.
The next message was short and to the point—“Hi, Reese, it’s Ginger. Call me sometime.”—and the third was delivered in a hot sultry voice. “Hey, cowboy, I certainly enjoyed my riding lesson the other night. I figure this soreness will be gone in another day or two, so when can we saddle up for another go-round? Give me a call. You’ve got my number.”
A snort drew his attention to the doorway, where Neely was leaning against the jamb. With her feet bare and the denim dress that exposed her arms and throat and reached almost to her ankles, she looked very country, very natural and right, as if he’d designed the room with her in mind.
But he hadn’t. He may have given a thought or two to sharing this place with a woman someday—he didn’t intend to stay single forever—but that dream woman had been faceless, nameless. She certainly hadn’t been Neely Madison, whom he considered much more a nightmare than a dream.
When he turned his back on her, she padded across the cool stone floor to the sink to refill her water glass, he guessed from the sounds of it. He erased the messages, then called Shay at the Heartbreak Café. As soon as he said hello, she accusingly interrupted.
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
“Sort
