heard the screen door in back squeak open. He wouldn’t fix that, he thought. It was as good as any alarm.
What it signaled now was Molly, coming around the corner and sauntering barefoot across the lawn while the sunset tinted her hair a reddish gold.
“Smells good,” she said.
“Doesn’t it, though?” He jabbed at the steak with the fork. “Just about done, too.”
“Mmm.”
Her deep-throated murmur was so sensual, Dan nearly stabbed himself with the damn fork. He took a swallow of his beer to cool himself off. “There’s plenty here. Want to join me?”
“Oh, I… Well, I just made a Greek salad.”
He thought that was more of a yes than a no, but he didn’t want to press his luck. “They’re selling feta cheese in Moonglow? What is this world coming to?”
She laughed softly. “Would you like some?”
“Bring her on out,” he said.
By the time Molly was back with her big wooden salad bowl and—smart girl that she was—two steak knives, Dan had unfolded a second lawn chair, put half of the steak on each of two paper plates and popped open another bottle of beer. He opened one more when she said that sounded good.
“This is nice,” she said, digging into her steak. “I mean, it’s nice not having to eat alone.”
“Amen to that.”
For a minute, just on the edge of sundown, sharing a good meal with a pretty woman, Dan was nearly feeling human again. And then the big Crown Victoria cruiser with the Moonglow Sheriff’s Department insignia on the door swung into Molly’s driveway.
It figured, Dan thought. You couldn’t come home without a homecoming party.
Molly didn’t like the set of Sheriff Gil Watson’s thick jaw as he lumbered across the lawn, or the half-dare, half-smirk tilt of his lips. The man took his job way too seriously in her opinion. Moonglow wasn’t exactly the South Bronx.
Watson aimed a little nudge of his cap in her direction, mouthed a curt “Howdy, ma’am,” then stuck out one of his huge, hammy hands toward Dan.
“Heard you were back, Danny,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“Gil,” Dan said. “Looks like you took over your old man’s business.”
Done shaking hands, the sheriff hooked his thumbs through his big black gun belt. “Dad retired five years ago. Just seemed natural then, me taking up where he left off. Folks were used to saying Sheriff Watson.”
“Hell, I know I was. Your daddy picked me up by the scruff of the neck and threw my butt in jail more times than I like to remember.”
There was a brittle edge to Dan’s laughter that was apparently lost on the lawman, but not on Molly. She swore she could feel static electricity coming from the handyman. It almost made the hair stand up on her arms.
The sheriff lifted a hand to run it across his jawline. “Been in town long?”
“Just got in today.”
“Doing some repair work on Miss Hansen’s house?”
“Yep.” Dan shifted his weight and took a long pull from his beer.
“Is that what you’ve been doing all these years?” Watson asked, shifting his considerable weight, too, and somehow looking down at Dan even though the two were roughly the same height. “Working as a handyman?”
“More or less.”
“In Texas?”
“Pretty much.”
“Plenty of work, I’d expect.”
“Enough.”
Molly could almost smell the testosterone. The evening air reeked of it. It was definitely time for a bit of feminine sweet talk.
“We were just having some dinner, Sheriff. Steak and Greek salad. Would you care to join us?”
Watson touched the brim of his hat again. “Oh, no, ma’am. I’ve got evening rounds to make. I just stopped by to say hi to Danny here.” He took a step back, adjusting his gun belt over his ample gut. “I’ll be going now. Nice seeing you, Miss Hansen. Danny, you, too. You keep your nose clean, you hear?”
My God. In all of her thirty-one years, Molly had never actually heard somebody seethe, but that was precisely what Dan Shackelford was doing at the moment. He was hot enough to cook a steak on. She could almost hear his temper crackle, so it surprised her when his voice emerged fairly level and calm.
“See you around, Gil.”
It was only after the cruiser had pulled out of the driveway and moved on down the street that Dan swore harshly and tossed his paper plate with all its contents into the glowing coals of the grill.
“I lost my appetite,” he said.
“Don’t mind him, Dan,” Molly said. “Big fish. Little pond. You know. Watson just likes to make waves. And there’s no shame in being a handyman. God knows we need more of those than self-important lawmen.”
He just looked at her then for the longest while, shaking his head kind of sadly, before he said, “Good night, Molly. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Then he disappeared into his trailer.
Chapter 2
The next morning Molly kept to her usual routine of waking early and getting to her desk by eight o’clock. The regular hours helped keep a sense of normalcy in her disrupted life. And that life promised to be even more disrupted now that Dan was going to be there, measuring, hammering, generally getting in her way, not to mention taking up more of her thoughts than she wanted to admit.
By nine o’clock, she had read and graded six essays entitled “My Favorite Season,” with summer the hands-down winner, in spite of the fact that she had spent half the time looking out the window for signs of life under the live oak.
By ten o’clock, she was worried in addition to being ticked off. Just when was all this measuring and hammering and getting in her way supposed to begin? She wasn’t running a trailer park or a campground, for heaven’s sake, and she certainly wasn’t running a retirement home for handymen, although that looked to be the case.
She poured a mug of coffee, then trudged across the yard and pounded on the Airstream’s door. She stood there, tapping her foot for what seemed like half an hour before the door finally swung open.
“You look terrible,” she said, offering the first words that came to mind when she saw the rumpled hair, the red eyes like flags at half-mast, the stained T-shirt and the ratty boxer shorts with their wrinkled happy faces.
“Is that coffee?”
Molly
