She’d taken possession of the comfortable armchair next to the gas fireplace at the foot of the enormous bed. He liked to sit in that chair and read at night. She’d kicked off her flip-flops and was exploring the texture of the thick gray carpet with her toes. He enjoyed the feel of that carpet, too. He was going to enjoy it even more from now on, after seeing her pleasure.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
She couldn’t quite hold on to a straight face. At least she’d found the humor in it. “You should be sorry. I try to bail you out and you ask me if it canwait? Then you release the breaking news that I’m your girlfriend?”
He had no real explanation to give her.
“I panicked,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“If it makes you feel any better, there’s not one person in Grand who believed it.”
She pressed her hands to her chest and fluttered her lashes. “Stop with the flattery. It’ll go straight to my head.”
“For what it’s worth, that speaks to their opinion of me, not you.”
“A young, single sheriff with a bad reputation… What a shocker.”
“Since we’re listing my attributes, you forgot about good-looking and rich,” he said.
“No, I didn’t.” She slid her feet into her flip-flops and stood. “I’ll allow that you panicked about the girlfriend thing. But what on earth possessed you to invite her to stay? Aren’t you worried about the questions she’ll ask people or what they might tell her about you?” She sounded curious, not judgy.
“Not in the slightest.” He was a whole lot more concerned about what they’d tell Jazz. He’d just announced that she was his girlfriend, after all. Like that wouldn’t come back to bite him, because there’d be more than one Good Samaritan who’d feel obliged to warn her that his track record with women wasn’t spot free. “Grand is a small town and we look after our own. They’ll say I’m the youngest and brightest sheriff Custer County ever had. They’ll likely bring up a few stories about my wild high school days—the kind they’d joke about at a wedding. They’ll tell her my favorite food, where I went to school, and that I’m good to my mother. And I asked her to stay because I didn’t want her to think I was running from her.”
She tilted her head in a way that said she was choosing a careful response. He couldn’t wait to hear it.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but when I’m fighting a forest fire that’s out of control, I don’t stand my ground because I care what someone else thinks.”
She had him there.
“I’ve got a good handle on it. I’ve been the sheriff in Custer County for almost three years.” He’d been interviewed all of once during that time, too. Some kids had gone on a weekend camping trip and gotten lost in the badlands.
“She wasn’t interviewing you about being a sheriff.” The way Jazz studied his face, with such a mixture of confusion and interest, said she wasn’t buying what he tried to sell. Rightly so. “Hasn’t anyone ever dug into your private life, before?”
“Why would they? Until this past February, my life has pretty much been an open book. No digging required.”
He’d never felt the need to explain why he sucked so badly at being rich before. Everyone in Grand already knew. But he’d never had a problem with the day-to-day pressures of being a sheriff. He enjoyed his job, in fact. When it came to the Endeavour’s money, however?
It exhausted him in ways he’d never dreamed. Judge Palmeter had a cruel sense of justice.
He dropped onto the foot of the bed, settled in, and opened up. “The guys and I had a slight misunderstanding with the law our first year in college and the judge took pity on us. At least, we thought it was pity. It turns out the man was really a sadist. He left us several billion dollars and a huge swathe of Montana.”
“The bastard,” Jazz murmured.
She sat down beside him, bending one knee slightly so that they partially faced, which caused the short skirt of her dress to ride up her smooth thighs, and braced her hands on either side of her hips. Dan had a mental flashback to when he was fourteen and alone with a girl on a bed for the first time, and despite the air-conditioning, the room became very warm.
“Right?” he said, shaking it off. “My life was a whole lot simpler this time last year. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, but money really complicates things.”
“Not having it really complicates things, too.”
The careful way she pointed it out wasn’t offhand or joking, or even the slightest bit envious, which were the ways most of his friends and family reacted when comparing their lives to his. She simply stated a fact. He remembered she’d once spent the last of her money on a bus out of Vegas, and while her current paycheck was okay, he earned a lot more as sheriff.
The annoying trust fund was a whole other issue, but her situation made it plain he’d definitely picked the wrong audience for that particular complaint. “True enough. Forget I said anything.”
“No. It’s okay. I’ve never had billions of dollars or huge swathes of land given to me, so I have no idea what your complications might be.”
Aha. Now he got it. It wasn’t him she had any serious objections regarding. She disliked the fact he had money.