He knew it was one thing, though-feeling like that over a girl he’d known all his life and had known he was going to eventually marry for about half of it, and who was his best friend besides-and that it was something else entirely to be getting a quiver in his belly over a woman he’d just arrested and seen charged with murder, and who he was going to be expected to do his best to help convict.

He knew all that and it didn’t change a damn thing, so he was feeling less than pleased with himself by the time the back door of the salon opened and the cause of his frustration appeared, looking like a mouse venturing out of her hole.

She hesitated when she saw him waiting there, looking for a moment as though she wanted to slip back into that hole and close the door. Then, darting a desperate look around as if searching for a new place to hide, or run to-or hoping there’d be somebody else there to rescue her-she came slowly toward the car. Roan rolled down his window and she halted, looking now like someone about to meet the hangman. She drew a shaky breath and said, “Okay, what now?”

Blame guilt, or his grouchy mood; he snarled back at her, “What do you mean, what now? I’m here to take you home, dammit.”

And instantly her shoulders got hunched up and she seemed to flinch. “You don’t need to do that.”

He couldn’t seem to stop himself from scowling at her. “Look, are we going to go through this again? I brought you here, I’ll take you home. Get in.”

Still she hesitated, and he said impatiently, “For God’s sake, Red, you don’t need to look at me like I’m the Big Bad Wolf. I’m just giving you a ride home.”

He didn’t know what to think when she went pale and jerked back as if he’d slapped her.

Chapter 8

Her eyes, framed by those godawful glasses, reminded Roan of terrified wild critters cowering in the shadows. “What…what did you say?”

Watching her narrowly, he said, “Uh…Big Bad Wolf…Little Red Riding Hood? You know-”

“Oh-of course.” A smile blossomed, misty with embarrassment and relief.

“What the hell did you think?” He still felt wary, and oddly shaken. But there was a new tingle of alertness running through him, too…a feeling there was something important in this little misunderstanding, if he only knew what it was.

She tried her best to divert him with a nervous laugh and a not very convincing gesture. “I thought-you reminded me of something, that’s all.”

Something? Or…someone? But he didn’t see any point in pursuing the issue. Not then.

Gathering up his patience, which he seemed to have been losing his grip on a lot lately, he said in a weary voice, “Well, all right, Miss Mary, but do you think you could get in the damn car? I’m not gonna eat you, you know.”

She threw him her vivid green glare and muttered, “You might not believe that either, if you could see your face.” But she trotted around the SUV and opened the passenger-side door.

While she was doing that, Roan had a chance to look at himself in his rearview mirror. What he saw made him snort, then laugh silently. He was smiling when she slipped in beside him, fingering back a lock of limp brown hair that had escaped the confines of the ponytail she’d clipped haphazardly to the back of her head. Watching her, his smile grew broader.

“What now?” she demanded, instantly suspicious again. “Why are you smiling?”

What was he going to say? He couldn’t tell her he was thinking how he’d like to take that damn clip and pitch it out the window, then slip his fingers into the silky softness of her hair…and that he was smiling the same way he would if he’d just set eyes on a meadow full of wildflowers, or a wild red sunset, or a nice piece of horseflesh running free. For no other reason than to acknowledge and thank God for the beauty of it.

And he didn’t want to ask her why she was trying to hide how beautiful she was, either-not then…although he did file that question away for a future time and place, along with the others he’d collected. Because he was more and more certain the dowdiness she put on with those ugly glasses and oversized clothes wasn’t ignorance or bad taste. Considering the woman made her living making other people beautiful, it was hard for him to believe she wouldn’t know how to recognize it in herself.

Which meant… his pulse quickened as his mind tripped quickly along the path that thought opened up for him. Say she’s a protected witness, but a new identity, a new location, aren’t enough. Say she’s recognizable whoever or whatever she is. If she’s trying to hide it, could it mean it’s the fact she’s beautiful that makes her recognizable?

He put on an expression of mock bewilderment and adopted a wounded tone that wouldn’t fool Susie Grace. “Hey, a minute ago you didn’t like my face because I wasn’t smiling, now you don’t like it because I am? I just can’t win with you, can I?”

She didn’t answer that, but busied herself fastening her seatbelt, then turned her head and studied him thoughtfully while he started up the SUV and checked his rearview mirrors. When they were headed down the alley, she shifted to face forward and said conversationally, “Don’t you have anything better to do than chauffeur a murder suspect around town? Like…a department to run? Criminals to catch?”

“See, that’s the good thing about being the boss,” he said cheerfully. “You get to delegate. Happens I’ve got a whole bunch of good people working for me. Amazes me, sometimes, how much they can get done so long as I stay out of their way.” His eyes slid past her as he made the turn onto Main Street, and he added softly and without a trace of humor, “The fact is, Miss Mary, right now you’re my number-one priority.”

I wonder why he calls me that-Miss Mary, she thought.

I wonder why I don’t mind that he does.

There was a knot of tension sitting at the very top of her chest, and she rubbed it absently as she watched the quaint Old-West-style storefronts on Main Street flash by. She noticed that many of them were wearing new coats of paint now that spring had come, and some had flower boxes sitting out in front, planted with pansies and snapdragons and daffodils that nodded in the wind. A lot of them had hung American flags, too.

I wonder why he looks at me the way he does sometimes…as if he really does see right through this charade of mine…as if he knows who I really am.

I wonder how he can know who I am when even I don’t, and why it bothers me so much that he does.

I wonder why I wonder about him so much…

“What do you do when you’re not working?”

Her heart gave a nervous lurch and her breath hitched, and she’d already flicked him a startled glance before she caught herself and murmured, “What do you mean?”

Watching the street ahead, he casually lifted one shoulder. “What do you like to do in your spare time? Read? Garden? Build birdhouses? Go out with friends?”

Warning instincts shivered over her skin. What is he doing? Is he trying to trick me? “Why are you asking?” she said lightly, on guard now.

The glance he gave her seemed more amused than exasperated, like the look an indulgent parent might bestow on a rebellious child. “It’s called conversation-you know, polite small talk? That’s where I ask you unimportant questions and you answer them, then you ask me some and I answer, and maybe in the process we get to know each other a little better.”

He was patronizing her. Annoyance crept over her, banishing the pricklings of suspicion. “Conversation?” she said with an incredulous huff of laughter. “You must be kidding. We shouldn’t even be talking at all-about anything.”

He was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “I’m not trying to trick you into anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. My asking didn’t have anything to do with you having secrets…me trying to find out who you are. Maybe I shouldn’t be asking any kind of questions-most likely I shouldn’t-hell, Lord knows I shouldn’t. But look, you’re a newcomer in a town where everybody knows everybody and half are related by blood or marriage. I’d like to learn more about you. That’s it-that’s all it is.” He was frowning when he finished, maybe realizing how many contradictions there’d been in what he’d said.

Mary studied his rugged profile, cast in bronze by the setting sun. The dent in his cheek was a purple shadow, his hair burnished gold. The skin on his forehead had a rosy glow that looked as if it would be warm to touch…and she couldn’t keep herself from thinking of the ways she might. Brushing that thick silky hair back, my fingers burrowing through it…holding him close while I…

Shimmering heat crept through her. I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought, but she heard herself clear her throat. “I don’t know many people in town-other than clients, that is. In the evenings I watch television…read…listen to music-”

“Yeah? Me too.” The smile he threw her was spontaneous-the first of its kind she’d seen. It softened his face, warmed his cold-steel eyes. Her heart gave a hiccup of surprise. “What kind of music? Not country, I’m thinkin’.”

Without knowing she was going to, she smiled back. “No. Classical, I guess…pop…Broadway…and anything you can dance to.”

“You like to dance?”

“I used to,” she said. Her smile faded and died.

“You ever go dancing on the weekends? We’ve got a few places around here. Naturally, it’s gonna be country, though.”

She stared blindly at her hands and shook her head. “On weekends I usually catch up on chores…go grocery shopping. When the weather lets me, I go to the firing range…maybe for a walk.” The remembered loneliness of those solitary walks came creeping over her like nighttime fog, banishing the lovely shimmering warmth, and only now that it was leaving her did she recognize the warmth as happiness.

“You ever ride?”

“What? Ride-oh, you mean horses?” She shuddered, and when she looked up, found she’d almost missed another of his oddly endearing, crooked grins.

“Well, yeah, this bein’ Montana.”

“Oh-God, no.” She looked at him with such horror that he laughed out loud. This time when he glanced at her, his eyes were bright with curiosity.

“Mean to tell me you’ve never ridden a horse before?”

She shook her head. Her skin was crawling with new prickles of warning.

“Why is that? Never had the chance, or scared to try?”

She gave a short, high laugh, considered for moment, then decided to ignore the warnings. “Both, I guess. Maybe a cause and effect in there somewhere.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding wisely, “must be a city girl.”

She turned her head sharply and looked out the window as a memory came from nowhere, unexpected and shocking as a slap.

“You think you want to be a city girl!” My father’s voice, thundering down like the wrath of God from somewhere above me-his pulpit, maybe. I remember the church smells of old wood and linseed oil and dead flowers as he shouted, “Cities are dens of wickedness and degradation, girl-remember what the Lord did to Sodom and Gomorrah. No! My answer is no, and no, and a thousand times no! No daughter of mine will ever follow a path that can only lead to sin and death! Not while I have breath!”

She thought, Goes to show how much you know, Sheriff. But the warning prickles were too insistant now to be ignored, and they kept her from saying it out loud.

The SUV turned sharply, jounced off the pavement and into a packed-earth parking lot, and came to a halt.

Mary glanced around in surprise; she’d been too fogged in by memories to notice they’d gone beyond the turn-off to her street. “Why are we stopping here?”

The sheriff pulled the keys from the ignition and turned to look at her, his hair and features weirdly highlighted by the flashing multicolored glow of the animated neon sign on the roof of Buster’s Last Stand Saloon. “It’s dinnertime. I’m hungry, and I’m guessing you are, too. I’m also guessing-well, hell, to be honest, I happen to know you haven’t done any grocery shopping since you got out of jail. Since I’m told you like the cooking here, thought you might like to stop in…pick up something to take home for dinner.”

She stared at him, trying to read him, wondering whether he’d meant to be cruel… whether he could really be so devious. But his expression, thanks to the flickering light of the neon sign, had nothing to tell her.

She turned to stare instead at the sign-a cowboy on a rearing horse, which was said to be something of an antique, though not as much of one as the original, which Mary had been told had depicted an Indian wielding a tomahawk. It had been replaced sometime in the latter part of the twentieth century when changing sensibilities had rendered it politically incorrect.