Past time. Way past time, she was thinking. Was she crazy, allowing him to touch her like that? Talk to her so outrageously? She stamped out of the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. She wanted to fill the cabin up with light, noise, anything to dispel the pervasive aura of privacy.
“Thank you for coming.” By the time he followed her into the common room, she was already at the front door, ungraciously holding it open for him.
“That’s what they pay me for.”
“How did you get here so fast, anyway?”
“I was already here.”
“Already here?”
He nodded. “I had driven out to check on you.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I got worried about those wackos, too.”
“There weren’t any wackos.”
“But we didn’t know that for sure. And if you couldn’t handle a family of raccoons, how do you think you’d stand up against a wacko?”
“Good night, Mr. Beaumont.”
“I was almost here when they radioed my patrol car that you suspected a prowler and needed help. Didn’t you see my headlights?”
Feeling the greater fool, she avoided his mocking eyes. “No, I didn’t. I was in the kitchen. Now I feel all safe and sound, knowing that you’re patrolling the lake.”
“Why did you panic when you heard the noise? Why didn’t you just get your gun?”
“Gun?”
“The one you threatened to shoot me with this afternoon if I didn’t get off your dock.”
“I didn’t—my father probably took it when...I don’t know where...It wasn’t loaded.”
“What is this, multiple choice?”
She glared at him.
“Are you sure there was a gun?”
“Good night, Mr. Beaumont,” she repeated through clenched teeth.
“What’s all this?”
Ty’s attention had been attracted to the table, where several sketch pads were spread out. The pencil sketches were, for the most part, unfinished.
Sunny sighed heavily, making no effort to conceal her annoyance. She slammed the open front door closed because it was letting mosquitoes in. “Drawings.”
“Bugs?” he asked, holding up one of her sketches and eyeing it critically.
“It’s a dragonfly.”
“Dragonflies again. Are they your hobby or something? You’re not a very good artist,” he remarked candidly.
She yanked the sketch away from him and returned it to the table. “And you’re not a very good sheriff. You don’t even wear a uniform.”
He was dressed in jeans and a plain white shirt, which looked anything but plain on him. The sleeves were rolled up his forearms to just below his elbows. The white cotton set off his deep tan and piercing blue eyes. It even matched the smile he flashed down at her.