he’d officially accepted the sheriff’s position, but Sam hadn’t wanted to disturb the graveyard-like atmosphere of someone else’s life, as represented by antique furniture and boxes filled with mementos.
The former owner had moved to a nursing home in Memphis, Tennessee, closer to his family. He’d left most of his belongings to the next occupant, obviously thinking they’d be of some use. Of course, if Sam could manage to adopt someone else’s life, that might not be a bad thing. Maybe it was even a good idea, based on the mess he’d almost made tonight with Ashlyn.
Hell, why did he even care about it? Even if Ashlyn had stirred more heat into his body than he’d felt in years, that didn’t mean squat. It was only lust—that hormone-driven Mack truck. Nothing to lose his head over.
Sam shifted, his jeans scratching the refrigerator door, as he peered at an army of beer bottles. Looked a lot like his days as a soldier, grouped together with his platoon of fighting machines, honing their discipline, dreaming of life beyond that short military stint.
After putting his days in the service behind him, Sam had gone back to college to earn a master’s degree in criminal justice. He’d then returned home to spend time with his parents before devoting himself to a career in law enforcement.
He’d been visiting Kane’s Crossing when his dad had been killed. Sam had done his best to take care of his mom in the aftermath, but it had been too little, too late.
After his mom’s death, he’d headed to D.C. to fulfill his dream of becoming a cop, of getting married and living in peace.
Thoughts of his dead wife twisted his throat until it burned. He didn’t want to think about her and their short-lived marriage. He couldn’t stand to think about the death of his own soul.
Dammit. He’d made his choices. And now he needed to live with the consequences.
He looked at the beer again, the shimmer of glass reminding him of Ashlyn Spencer’s lively gaze.
He needed to stop making bad choices.
Sam thrust shut the refrigerator door, the clink of the bottles mocking him with their glee.
On the other side of town, Ashlyn wandered from her art studio back to her bedroom. She had no patience for the paint-splattered canvas hideaway tonight. No tolerance for sitting still, running her fingers over shapeless metal, trying to conjure ideas that wouldn’t leave the darkness of her mind for fear of failing. Even so, her hands desperately needed something to do.
She bent down, peeking beneath her bed. There it was, a web-shrouded memory book.
After pulling it out, she flipped open the yellowed pages, smiling when she came across a blue jeans’ pocket from her first boyfriend, who’d torn it from his backside and given it to her on a whim. He’d moved from town the next month after the Spencers foreclosed on his family’s home.
Dried flowers, watercolor paintings, journal entries, magazine clippings… Here it was.
The red ribbon.
Ashlyn clutched it, remembering how it had comforted her beneath the Spencer High football bleachers on that October night so long ago.
At seven years old, she’d hidden in the darkness, peeking through the slats of the seats, feeling locked in the shadows of her traumatic cave memories. Beneath the bleachers, she had safely tucked herself away, becoming invisible.
As she’d drawn pictures in the dirt with a discarded straw, she spied a tall, wiry silhouette—broad through the shoulders and lean in the hips—blocking the light of the locker room. The boy ambled nearer, to a cheerleader whom Ashlyn hadn’t noticed leaning against a nearby water fountain.
Jo Ann Walters. Ashlyn had caught her breath, hoping that she’d grow up to look just like the head cheerleader, a girl even her stuck-up brother went silly over. She reminded Ashlyn of a princess in one of her Disney storybooks, all pink and slender, with a smile that glimmered with fairy dust.
Enthralled, Ashlyn had set down the straw, sniffed her runny nose and found a comfortable place to spy on her role model.
Even now, with the passage of years, Ashlyn could still see the light from the locker room as Jo Ann had fallen into the boy’s arms.
They’d kissed hello and, afterward, the boy thrust a bunch of what looked like flowers at Jo Ann, who accepted them with a giggle.
It was the most romantic thing Ashlyn had ever seen. Her father never brought her mother anything, not even chocolates. They’d always ignored each other.
Ashlyn sighed, remembering how she’d wished that someday someone would look at her the way the boy had looked at Jo Ann.
She remembered cringing back into the shadows as the couple began walking to the parking lot, passing her hiding place.
As if in slow motion, a ribbon had fluttered to the ground from the flower stems, a perfect circle, a shadow in the light.
She’d scuttled from her hiding place to retrieve it, running it between her fingers with something akin to awe. It was soft and silky, as red as a Valentine.
The boy must’ve heard her, because he turned around, light suffusing his face.
Sam Reno, one of her brother’s football team-mates.
She’d wanted to run back to her hiding place, to cower in shame. A silly ribbon. What would Sam think of her?
But he’d smiled. A crooked slant of a smile that had led to years of teenage dreaming for Ashlyn. No boy had ever lived up to it since.
Now Sam was back, and he probably couldn’t stand the sight of her.
Ashlyn wandered to the window, and stared at the dim lights of Kane’s Crossing in the near distance. The wooden window frames cast barlike shadows over her hands as she held up the ribbon to the moon, watching its circle imprint on the silvery light.
Somehow she felt like the world’s most privileged prisoner.
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