“None of that sounds like something you would have put up with.” Not the sheriff he knew, anyway.
“I put up with it longer than I should have. He showed up tonight to ask me to come home.”
“You’re not considering that, are you?” He really should have thrown Pretty Boy’s ass in jail.
“Not a chance in hell.”
His heart started beating again. “But why show up a year later? Something doesn’t sit right about that.”
“I know. Danny never does anything without a reason, and it’s always about him. But it’s not going to happen, so who cares? Not me.” She finished off the wine, then poured some more. She frowned at the glass. “I never have more than one.”
“Tonight seems like a good reason to make an exception.” He was drinking coffee in case she decided she wanted him to drive her home, but he hoped to talk her into staying the night. Preferably in his bed, even if all he did was hold her.
“You can say that again.”
“Tonight seems like a good—” He grinned when she slid her foot out from under her and poked his leg with her toes.
“That was a figure of speech, silly.”
He grabbed her foot before she could take it away and put it on his leg.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a foot massage.”
She groaned when he pressed his thumbs into her arch, and the sound went straight to his groin. The affect she was having on him was growing obvious.
He grabbed a pillow and put it on his lap, then rested her foot on it. “I assume you were the one to break it off?”
“Yeah.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “That feels so good. Anyway, he decided I should quit my job, said he worried about me putting myself in danger. That was total bull. He didn’t like that I was the chief deputy sheriff. He thought that made him look bad, that I was more important than him.”
“At least all that came out before you married him, not after.” And before there were any children caught in the middle. From what he’d observed over the past year, Skye had her act together, and she wasn’t a selfish person. He couldn’t see her dumping her children on an aunt who didn’t want them, promising it was only for a few days. What a joke that was.
“Believe me, I will be forever thankful for that. But it got worse before it got better. After I broke up with him, he started rumors about me. Claimed he’d ended it with me because he’d caught me cheating on him. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he claimed that I had pocketed some money and drugs on a combined police department-sheriff’s department operation. The sheriff was forced to open an investigation.”
“The sheriff believed him?” It was probably a good thing he hadn’t known all that when they’d been at Beam Me Up. He would have found a reason to slap handcuffs on her ex and haul him off to jail. Then he would have lost the key to the cell.
“No, not at all, but he had to investigate. I didn’t like it, but I understood.” She finished her second glass of wine, then eyed the bottle.
“Go for it. I’ve got you tonight.” It was hard to hide his rage, but he somehow managed it. What he wanted to do was hunt the asshole down and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
She waved a hand at him. “You’re a good man, Chief.”
He snorted. “That must be the wine talking. I should have recorded you saying that so when you deny it, I could play it back for you.”
“Not admish...admissible—” she beamed at getting the word right “—in court.”
She was cute when she was tipsy. “Is all that why you left Florida?”
“Yeppie. Decided to put turd face in my rearview mirror. Start over somewhere no one knew me and wondered how much of his BS was true.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.” The pieces fell together in his mind. “What he put you through is the reason you didn’t want anything to do with me once you found out I was a cop.” It wasn’t a question. A part of him understood why she’d reacted the way she had, but another part of him resented that she’d lumped him in with her ex. “I’m not him, Skye.”
Those blue eyes that had been nothing but ice for the past year when looking at him turned warm. “I know.”
She’d whispered the words, almost as if she didn’t want him to hear her admission, but he had. There was no going back to the tension-filled relationship of the past year. He wouldn’t allow it.
“Give me your other foot.” And that was only the beginning of what he wanted from her.