him off the porch, around the side of the house and down a long pathway between his stone house and the neighbors’.
It was hard not to be distracted by the view.
Her fingers trailed along the stonework walls as they reached the end of the path. Jed reached up and snaffled a key from the doorframe.
‘Pretty poor security for a county sheriff.’ Or was it actually true what they said about small-town America? She couldn’t imagine living anywhere you didn’t have double deadlocks and movement sensors.
As he pushed the timber door open, he grunted. ‘I figure anyone breaking in is probably only in need of somewhere safe to spend the night.’
‘What if they trash the place?’
He turned and stared at her. ‘Where are you from?’
The unease returned and, until then, she hadn’t noticed it had dissipated. She stiffened her spine against it. ‘New York.’
He nodded as if congratulating himself on his instincts. He looked like he wanted to say something else but finally settled on, ‘Larkville is nothing like the city.’
‘Clearly.’ She couldn’t help the mutter. Manhattan didn’t produce men like this one.
She shut that thought down hard and followed him into the darkened room and stared around her as he switched on the lights. It was smaller than her own bathroom back home, but somehow he’d squeezed everything anyone would need for a comfortable night into it. A thick, masculine sofa draped in patchwork throws, a small two-person timber table that looked like it might once have been part of a forge, a rustic kitchenette. And upstairs, in what must once have been a hayloft…
She moved quickly up the stairs.
Bright, woven rugs crisscrossed a ridiculously comfortable-looking bed. The exhaustion of the past week suddenly made its presence felt.
‘They’re handcrafted by the people native to this area,’ he said. ‘Amazingly warm.’
‘They look it. They suit the room.’
‘This was the original barn on the back of the building back in 1885.’
‘It’s…’ So perfect. So amazing. ‘It looks very comfortable.’
He looked down on her in the warm timber surrounds of the loft bedroom. The low roof line only served to make him seem more of a giant crowded into the tiny space.
She regretted coming up here instantly.
‘It is. I lived here for months when my place was being renovated.’
She was distracted by the thought that she’d be sleeping in Sheriff Jed Jackson’s bed tonight, but she stumbled out the first response that came to her. ‘But it’s so small….’
His lips tightened immediately. ‘Size isn’t everything, Ms. Patterson.’
What happened to ‘Ellie’? He turned and negotiated his descent quickly and she hurried after him, hating the fact that she was hurrying. She forced her feet to slow. ‘This will be very nice, Sheriff, thank you.’
He turned and stared directly at her. ‘Jed. I’m not the sheriff when I’m out of uniform.’
Great. And now she was imagining him out of uniform.
Unfamiliar panic set in as her mind warmed to the topic. It was an instant flashback to her childhood when she’d struggled so hard to be mature and collected in the company of her parents’ sophisticated friends, and feared she’d failed miserably. Back then she had other methods of controlling her body; now, she just folded her manicured nails into her palm and concentrated on how they felt digging into her flesh.
Hard enough to distract, soft enough not to scar.
It did vaguely occur to her that maybe she’d just swapped one self-harm for another.
‘You haven’t asked the price,’ he said.
‘Price isn’t an issue.’ She cringed at how superior it sounded here—standing in a barn, out of context of the Patterson billions.
His stare went on a tiny bit too long to be polite. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’
Silence fell.
Limped on.
And then they both chose the exact same moment to break it.
‘I’ll get a fire started—’
‘I’ll just get my bags—’
She opened the door to the pathway and the icy air from outside streamed in and stopped her dead.
A hard body stepped past her. ‘I’ll get your bags, you stay in the warm.’
His tone said he’d rather she froze to death, but his country courtesy wouldn’t let that happen.
‘But I—’
He didn’t even bother turning around. ‘You can get the fire going if you want to be useful.’
And then he closed the door in her face.
Useful. The magic word. If there was one thing Eleanor Patterson was, it was useful. Capable. A doer. Nothing she couldn’t master.
She took a deep breath, turned from the timber door just inches from her face and stared at the small, freestanding wood fire and the basket of timber next to it, releasing her breath slowly.
Nothing she couldn’t master…
The night air was as good as a cold shower. Jed’s body had begun humming the moment he opened his door to Ellie Patterson, and tailing those jeans up the steep steps to the loft hadn’t reduced it. He had to work hard not to imagine himself throwing the Comanche blankets aside and plumping up the quilt so she could stretch her supermodel limbs out on it and sleep.
Sleep. Yeah, that’s what he was throwing the blankets aside for.
Pervert.
She was now his tenant and she was a visitor to one of the towns under his authority, a guest of the Calhouns. Ellie Patterson and feather quilts had no place in his imagination. Together or apart.
She just needed a place to stay and he had one sitting there going to waste. He’d dressed it up real nice on arrival in Larkville and had left the whole place pretty much intact—a few extra girlie touches for his gram when she came to visit, but otherwise the same as when he’d used it.
It might not be to New York standards—especially for a woman who didn’t need to ask the price of a room—but she’d have no complaints. No reasonable ones anyway. It was insulated, sealed and furnished, and it smelled good.
Not as good as Ellie Patterson did, but good enough.
He opened her unlocked car to pop the trunk.
He’d
