his throat. It didn’t work entirely. “Shay’s a friend. So is her husband. And Ginger would be too young to be my kid sister…if I had a kid sister.”
“What about ‘Ride me, cowboy’?”
Her name was Isabella, she’d come to Heartbreak a month earlier to spend a weekend with her college roommate—Callie, the town’s nurse-midwife—and hadn’t left yet, and he wasn’t sure he would ever look at her again without thinking of sex.
And Neely.
“Believe it or not, the riding lesson she was talking about was actually a riding lesson. She’s never been around horses so I taught her the basics.”
Studying him thoughtfully, she chewed a mouthful of cardboard-tasting wheat chaff and washed it down with juice. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?” she asked evenly. “As far as I know, the only thing you’ve ever lied to me about is the way you felt about me.”
“I never lied.” He’d loved her dearly, even though they’d had some very different ideas on some very important subjects such as right, wrong and justice. Even though he’d taken a lot of flak on the job because of his relationship with her. He’d loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone.
Until the day he’d watched Judy Miller die.
“So your definition of always was just different from mine—as, apparently, was your definition of love.”
“No. We’d simply reached the point where I could no longer overlook certain aspects of who you were and what you did. I couldn’t continue a relationship with you and maintain any measure of self-respect.”
She brought her dishes to the sink, rinsed them, dried her hands, then faced him. There were two spots of bright color on her cheeks, made more prominent by her unusual paleness. “I didn’t kill that woman.”
“You made it possible.”
Stubbornly she shook her head side to side. “Feel guilty if you want, Reese, but don’t try to put it on me. I didn’t do anything wrong. My client was entitled to a proper defense, and I saw that he got it. I did my job, and I did it well. End of story.”
“You did your job without regard for the truth, without the slightest concern for the reality of the situation. You wanted to win at any cost, and you succeeded—even though the cost was an innocent woman’s life. You may not have pulled the trigger, Neely, but you put the gun in that bastard’s hand. You put him back out on the streets. You made it possible for him to make good on his threats.”
“I was just doing my job! I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Lie to yourself, but don’t bother lying to me. I had to learn the hard way not to believe anything you say, but I did learn.” He walked out then and left her standing there looking…shaken. Upset. Regretful. And guilty. She knew she wasn’t as innocent in Judy’s death as she pretended.
Just as he knew that he shared some responsibility, too, along with the rest of the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department.
Refusing to follow that train of thought, he dropped down into his favorite chair and used the remote to turn on the television and surf through a hundred or so satellite channels before settling on a fifties-era Western. Though he’d seen the show before, he concentrated on it intensely so he wouldn’t have to notice that Neely was still standing where he’d left her, that her head was bowed and her shoulders rounded, or that she looked as forlorn and alone as anyone he’d ever seen.
If she was forlorn, that was her own fault, and being alone was her choice. She’d never faced any shortage of male attention. When they were dating, men had often hit on her right in front of him. Not men in Thomasville, who knew what she did or what he did, but in the city—in restaurants, clubs or just walking down the street. From teenage boys to white-haired grandfathers, it had seemed that no stranger was immune to her charms.
He sure as hell hadn’t been immune the first time he’d seen her. But he was now. He was older, tougher, less susceptible to women in general, to big brown eyes and delicate little smiles in particular. He knew there were things in life more important than great sex and that the price for getting mixed up with Neely was dearer than he could pay. Besides, after today, he wasn’t going to see her again.
And now he’d learned one more lesson—he was never doing another favor for Jace as long as he lived. That was a promise.
In the kitchen Neely finally moved—he heard, felt but didn’t see it—but she didn’t come into the living room. Good. It was easier to keep her out of his mind when she was out of his sight.
She gave him a few hours of relative peace, with nothing but the television to disturb the quiet, before she came in and sat uncomfortably on the edge of the couch. He pretended to not notice her for as long as he could, but clearly there was something she wanted to say, and just as clearly she didn’t intend to say it until he gave her his attention. He waited until the next commercial break, muted the TV and looked at her.
“What are the plans for today?”
His plans were to be rid of her by sundown. Other than that, he neither knew nor cared, and he shrugged to convey exactly that. “Either Jace will pick you up or you’ll go to the jail over in Buffalo Plains.”
“I understand that. But when?”
He shrugged again.
“Is there any reason I can’t go now?”
“Beyond the fact that Jace isn’t here?”
“You could take me to the jail.”
He could do that, Reese acknowledged—could give her over into the custody of the jailer, then go to his office on the floor above. Get some work done. Forget that she was locked up below in a six-by-eight-foot cell with a metal cot, no windows and no privacy even for the bathroom. Forget that she preferred such accommodations over his company. And while he was forgetting that, he would also wipe the last twenty-four hours from his memory. Sure, not a problem.
“Jace can pick me up there.”
But walking out of the jail with her would attract more attention than walking out of this house with her—more attention than his cousin would want. If she really was in danger, Reese wasn’t about to do anything that might increase that danger for Jace.
Her voice grew taut. “I’d rather stay in your jail than in your house.”
“I’d prefer that, too.” But the words felt like a lie. Truth was, he found the prospect of Neely behind bars—an idea he’d once taken great satisfaction in—unsettling. Behind bars in his own jail… Not yet. Not until Jace’s time ran out.
“I gave him until this evening,” he said flatly. “Like it or not, you’re stuck here until then.”
For a long moment his gaze locked with hers, until he finally forced his back to the television. He turned the audio on again and watched from the corner of his eye as she stood and walked out of the room.
He was in the process of giving a small sigh of relief when the back door slammed. Jumping to his feet, he made it to the door in record time, crossed the deck in a half dozen strides, took the steps in one leap and grabbed her arm before she’d made it halfway across
