“Do you have any enemies?”
“Other than my daughter’s boyfriend?” she said, and then looked immediately contrite. She fiddled with the gloves in her hand. “Strike that, would you?”
“Why?”
“It’s not him…I was just joking.”
“Not a joking matter.”
“No,” she said soberly, her eyes suddenly a darker shade of green. “It’s not.”
“What about your ex-husband?”
She shook her head. “Robert’s too into himself, and he and I get along.”
“What about boyfriends or ex-lovers?”
She smiled and blushed as if embarrassed. “None,” she said, dropping the gloves onto her lap and looked directly at him. “Surprised?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not like the characters I play, Sheriff,” she said quickly, a flash of anger coloring her cheeks.
“I assumed not.”
She arched an eyebrow, silently accusing him of the lie. “A lot of people do, you know. They think I’m the person they see in the film. They tend to forget that what I do is called ‘acting’ for a reason. They identify with me as the character I’m portraying, and that’s just not the way it is. I—”
His phone jangled and he held up a hand, took the short call, then hung up.
“Sorry,” he apologized, and scanned his notes.
“You were asking me about my love life,” she reminded him, an edge to her voice, the anger still simmering in her eyes.
He didn’t blame her for not wanting to discuss what happened behind her closed doors,
but that was just too damned bad. Today, if she wanted his department’s help, she had to provide answers. To all of his questions. “So what about it?”
Her jaw slid to one side and she looked as if she wanted to spit nails. Instead she gripped the arms of the chair. “The deal is this: I really haven’t dated much since the divorce. I’ve seen a couple of men for coffee and dinner and that’s about it. It probably totals four or five dates, if you can call them that.”
“Who were the men?”
“Jesus.”
He waited, stared at her, gave her time.
“I don’t want to drag everyone into this.”
“It’s important.” He was firm and getting tired of her backpedaling. “Either you want me to help you or not.”
“Yeah, I know. Okay, I’ve gone out to dinner twice with Harrison Brennan—he’s my neighbor and does some odd jobs around the place. I’ve had coffee with Travis Settler, the father of one of my daughter’s friends, a couple of times. Believe me, it’s all pretty tame. Nothing X-rated.”
He ignored the jab. “Why haven’t you dated more?” he asked, and looked at her hard again. He had assumed that men would be all over her, but she didn’t seem to be bullshitting him.
“I guess I’m too busy, and I intimidate a lot of men, I think.”
“Because of your fame?”
“Exactly.”