girl, and pay the damned ticket. Play your hand close to your vest and don’t stir up the locals. Remember you’ve got a job to do.”
Carrie stopped, took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. She couldn’t let her temper screw up things.
Okay. She’d pay the damned ticket—if she could find somebody to take her money. Nobody was sitting at the front desk.
Spotting a door ajar at the back of the large ante-room, she headed straight for it. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could get on with her plans.
Horace P. Pfannepatter, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2 was painted in black letters on the frosted glass panel. Through the crack, she could see a dark-haired man in a white shirt and tie sitting at a desk, rummaging through a drawer.
She rapped on the glass and pushed open the door. “Judge?”
“Yes,” he said, glancing up.
Stunned, for a moment she could only gawk. The judge was drop-dead, movie-star gorgeous. He had big brown eyes with eyelashes a foot long and one of those perfectly sculpted faces she’d only seen on young Greek men. She hated to admit it, but the guy took her breath away.
A pity about the name.
Who could seriously consider anyone named Horace P. Pfannepatter?
“What does the P. stand for?”
He stared at her in a sort of slack-jawed way that made Carrie wonder if his mother had married her first cousin. Mostly his eyes seemed to zero in on her bare legs. From his expression, you’d have thought he’d never seen a woman in shorts before. She yanked off her sunglasses and tapped her foot impatiently.
His eyes finally made it back to her face, and he gave himself a little shake. “Pardon?”
“What does the P. stand for?” she said a little louder, thinking maybe he had a hearing problem.
He gave her another out-to-lunch look, then frowned. “The P.?”
Despite his good looks, this guy didn’t seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. What did it take to get elected to JP around here—being able to sit up and take nourishment?
“The P. in Horace P. Pfannepatter. What does it stand for?”
“Oh. Puffer. It’s a family name.”
Figured. A real shame. A real shame, too, about the gold wedding ring he wore.
“Your eyes are…very unusual,” he said, squinting at her. “I—I suppose you hear that a lot.”
She smiled. “A lot.”
After a slow trip down her body, his gaze went back to her legs. She almost reconsidered paying the ticket. Twenty to one that with a little sweet talk, she could get Horace to dismiss it, especially with the photo of the sign and the parked semi she had taken—and given his preoccupation with her exposed skin.
Better not. Resigned to her earlier decision, she sighed. “I need to pay a ticket.”
“A ticket? Oh. Maureen can help you with that.”
“Maureen?”
“Yes. At the desk out front.”
“Nobody was there when I came in.”
“Let’s see if we can find her,” he said, standing.
If Carrie thought he looked good sitting, on his feet he was dynamite. He must have been six-two or-three and no slouch in the body department. When he touched her back to usher her from his office, she felt as if she’d been zapped with a cattle prod.
Odd.
Static electricity, she was sure. He was married for goshsakes.
He smiled and her knees wobbled. He had a mouth full of perfect white teeth and a killer of a lopsided smile. “Ah, there’s Maureen. She can help you.”
A middle-aged blonde, with a half inch of black roots, stood, a distressed look on her face. “Oh, Judge, I’m sorry. I was in the storeroom looking for another box.”
“No problem. This lady needs to pay a ticket.”
“Yes, sir. Here’s the one I found.” Maureen handed him an empty carton.
“Thanks. This is perfect.”
The judge went back to his office, and Carrie shelled out eighty-seven bucks to Maureen. The ticket paid, she hightailed it toward the Twilight Inn. She was tired and thirsty and eager to get settled in at the place that would be home for a while.
FRANK OUTLAW, judge of the County Court-at-Law of Naconiche County, stood at the window, absently fingering his wedding ring as he watched the white BMW pull away. He couldn’t believe that the woman had shaken him the way she had. He hadn’t experienced that kind of mind-blowing reaction to a woman since he was a teenager—probably not since he’d first kissed Susan when they were about fourteen. He hadn’t even thought about a woman in sexual terms since his wife died, and that had been two years before.
But something about the dark-haired, purple-eyed vixen who had just strolled into Horace’s office had sure revved up his motor. He’d been so dumbfounded that he hadn’t been able to string a coherent sentence together. She probably thought he was a blithering idiot.
He’d always been a leg man, and she’d had the longest, prettiest legs he’d ever seen. Hell, she was gorgeous all over. Tall and slender with those startling eyes and kiss-me lips, she was a knockout. Not even the slightly crooked front tooth or the small scar on the side of her chin detracted from her looks. In fact, the small imperfections only seemed to make her more intriguing and heighten her sensuality. And she was sexy. It oozed from her skin and clung to her like a cloud of low morning fog on the river bottom. He was getting aroused just thinking about her. It was a strange feeling.
Frank chuckled to himself. Good thing his brother J.J. wasn’t around, or he’d never hear the end of it. J.J. was always after him to take out this woman or that, eager to jump-start his sex life, but Frank simply hadn’t been interested. Susan had been the love of his life, and when she’d been killed, something had died in Frank as well.
Good thing, too, that the woman was probably passing through on her way to someplace besides Naconiche. A woman like her could deal a man some misery.
There was a rap on the door, and Maureen stuck in her head. “I’m sorry about the interruption, Judge. That’s the third ticket Otis Purvis has issued in the same spot today. And there’s a truck broken down on the side of the highway blocking the sign. I noticed it on my way to work this morning. I told Miss Campbell she had a right to appeal, but she insisted on paying the ticket.”
“Miss Campbell?”
“Carolyn Campbell. From Houston. But she’s staying at the Twilight Inn while she’s in town. I gave her directions.”
Frank felt his gut twist. The Twilight Inn was the motel run by his soon to be sister-in-law, Mary Beth Parker. It was on his way home. He nodded. “I have to be back at the courthouse by two,
