perfectly capable of walking.”
“No, you’re not. And you’re in no position to be giving orders.”
Surprise took her breath away, stifling any more protests. He carried her across the lobby into Hayes’s empty office and deposited her on a sofa.
“I’m okay—” She struggled to rise, but he pushed her back onto the sofa with a firm hand.
“Stay put.” His tone left no room for argument. He pivoted on his heel and headed toward the lobby.
“Wait!”
He turned at her call, and she was struck again by the man’s magnetic charm. Accustomed to addressing conference rooms filled with international captains of industry, Jessica found herself suddenly tongue-tied in front of one incredibly attractive cowboy.
His wide mouth lifted in a slow, bone-melting grin, and amusement lit his eyes at her extended silence. “Well?”
“I… Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Just doing my job.” With a look that made her stomach flip-flop, he touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and stepped out the door.
Jessica propped herself on her elbows and watched him stride into the lobby, where the other customers and tellers had gathered. As her heartbeat returned to normal after revving at the stranger’s sexy smile, her previous irritation at her current assignment rose to new heights. She hadn’t been in Montana more than a few hours, and already she’d been shot at and man-handled. Max would have to cough up more than three weeks in St. Thomas to compensate for this.
She struggled upright, swung her feet to the floor and started to stand, but her knees wouldn’t cooperate. More shaken by her close brush with death than she cared to admit, she collapsed onto the sofa with a soft grunt.
She was where she’d intended to be, in John Hayes’s office. She might as well wait.
ROSS MCGARRETT left the woman in John Hayes’s office and returned to the lobby. He was a man slow to anger, but at this moment he felt like Mount St. Helens ready to blow. The robber had not only come within a hairbreadth of killing a young woman, he had stolen hardworking people’s money and scared a sweet old lady half to death.
Holding his temper in check, Ross waded into the midst of the frightened group in the bank’s lobby and strode straight to the information desk where Miss Minnie Perkins was trembling like a leaf in a gale-force wind.
With the bank filled with people, he’d decided against using the gun in the holster at the small of his back to confront the fake Santa. Better to let the robber get away than to have someone killed. His decision, he realized, had been the right one when the man proved so trigger-happy. Ross’s next instinct had been to follow the robber into the street. Then Josh Greenlea, the deputy on duty, had roared by in hot pursuit in his cruiser. With Josh on the felon’s tail, Ross had decided to remain with the rattled customers and secure the crime scene until the technicians arrived.
Kneeling on one knee by the information desk, Ross grasped the old woman’s cold hands. “You okay, Miss Minnie?”
All the color had drained from her weathered face. “I need my pills.”
Ross opened her oversize handbag and dug out the bottle of nitroglycerin from among the jumble of wadded Kleenex and grocery coupons. He popped the cap and dumped one pill into her shaking hand, then thought better of that and gripped it between his fingers. “Open wide and lift your tongue.”
Like a baby bird, Minnie did as he asked, and he tucked the pill beneath her tongue. “Want someone to drive you to the hospital?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine now.”
Renewed anger at the robber surged through Ross. If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never understand people who felt that laws didn’t apply to them. As a young boy, Ross had been taught by his grandfather that law was the glue that held society together, and Ross’s reverence for the law had eventually led to his election as sheriff of Swenson County. He took his sworn duty seriously.
And he took the breaking of the law within the county’s borders personally.
Especially personal had been the murder of his wife, Kathy, last year….
With an effort, he shoved aside that pain and the unsolved mystery. One crime at a time, he reminded himself and moved swiftly through the lobby, speaking to each witness, consoling the distraught customers and easing them away from any possible forensic evidence.
The entire time, however, he found himself glancing into John Hayes’s office, unable to keep his eyes off the beautiful stranger who’d come so close to perishing from the shotgun’s blast. The floral fragrance of her shampoo, something tropical and exotic, still clung where his chin had brushed her sleek auburn hair when he’d yanked her from harm’s way. Her provocative scent stirred feelings he didn’t have time to deal with now.
Concentrating on the business at hand, he realized the attractive woman in Hayes’s office had been one of two strangers in the bank that morning. The robber had been the other. His shot at her could have been a ploy intended to terrorize the others into submission. The probability that this petite and elegant woman was Santa’s accomplice was a stretch, but Ross had to check out every angle.
“Everybody stay put till the Crime Scene Unit arrives,” he warned the others after a call to dispatch, who assured him the CSU was en route.
Then he returned to Hayes’s office.
At his approach, the woman leaped to her feet, all five foot three of her. She had seemed such a tiny submissive thing in his arms, but now she appeared ready to take on a wild grizzly five times her size. Her stylishly short coat and skirt revealed long, slender legs, and as he’d held her, he had registered the pleasant fact that she was deliciously rounded in all the right places. Her spunk as well as her appearance impressed him. No, spunk suggested too much heat. In spite of having come within inches of losing her life, the woman appeared cool and composed. Glacial was a better term.
“I’m Sheriff—”
“Where’s John Hayes?” she asked abruptly.
Ross shrugged. “Probably taking a late lunch, but he’ll be back soon if he’s heard the news. Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”
She cocked her head and observed him with defiant blue eyes, dark and deep as a mountain lake. “You said ‘sheriff.’ Am I under arrest?”
“Should you be?”
“I may be crazy for coming here and for not hearing the robber’s warning,” she said in a rueful tone, “but I haven’t done anything illegal.”
“I’ll need your name and address.”
She slid the tiny strap of a fine leather handbag off her shoulder, snapped open the gold clasp and removed a business card. “Everything you need to know is right there.”
With interest, he scanned the card, printed on heavy, expensive stock. She was Jessica Landon with Rinehart and Associates, Financial Consultants, out of Miami. The card appeared authentic, but anyone with a computer and the right paper could print one. “You’re a long way from home.”
