Hope washed her hair, then stepped out of the shower. It had been a long time since a man had made her skin tingle. A long time since she’d let a man close enough for her to feel the warm pull of him low in the pit of her stomach. A long time since she’d wanted to feel a big, warm body next to hers.
Hope didn’t believe in sex without love. She’d been there and done that in college. She was thirty-five now and knew there was no such thing as meaningless sex. If sex were meaningless, it wouldn’t leave you hurt and hollow in the morning. And there was nothing more sad or more lonely than the morning after a one-night stand. Nothing more delusional than a woman telling herself it didn’t matter.
But sex with love required a relationship. A relationship took effort. It took trust, and while she could tell herself it was time to try again, she could never quite place herself in the position to let anyone close. Intellectually, she knew that most men didn’t cheat and create children with their wives’ best friends but knowing it in her head and knowing it in her heart were two totally different things.
Shutting off the dark commentator in her soul was next to impossible. The critic that looked out from her eyes and saw the flaws hidden deep within her body.
Since the onset of puberty, Hope had suffered from endometriosis, and in the spring of her junior year in college, the symptoms became so severe she was left with little choice but surgery. At the age of twenty-one, Hope had a total hysterectomy, which left her free of debilitating pain. Free to enjoy her life. Free to enjoy relationships with men. It also left her unable to have children of her own, but the loss of her ability to procreate hadn’t devastated her. She’d always figured that when the time was right, she’d adopt a child who needed her. The absence of a uterus hadn’t ever made her feel as if she were less female than any other woman.
Until the day her husband had served her with divorce papers and she’d learned that he’d fathered a child with someone else. That news had knocked her flat and leveled her self-confidence. Now she wasn’t sure of anything, least of all where she fit in the world.
Hope dried her body and brushed the tangles from her hair. Three years ago she’d thought she’d handled her life so well. She’d thought she’d picked herself up. She’d restarted her career, taken half of Blaine’s money and his beloved Porsche. But she hadn’t handled anything. She’d just avoided looking at it. She hadn’t picked herself up, she’d just been operating from a flat position so no one could knock her on her ass again.
Last night she’d let herself feel passion again. Let it heat her blood and tease her skin.
She walked into her bedroom and opened her closet doors. Well, maybe “let” was the wrong word. Much too passive. Once he’d kissed her, there had been no letting. No thought of letting, just doing. Once she’d felt the press of his lips and the feel of his hard chest beneath her hands, desire had taken control. For the first time in years, she hadn’t run from it. She’d stood within the warmth of it, feeling it heat her up with the subtlety of a blowtorch. At some point she would have stopped. She would have. Of course she would have, but he’d stopped her, making it seem like the easiest thing he’d ever done. Then, without a backward glance, he’d walked out of her house, and right now, Dylan was the last person in the world she wanted to see. Maybe she’d be ready to face him tomorrow. Or next week.
In such a small town, the only way to avoid him would be to lock herself in her house, but she wasn’t going to do that for two very good reasons. First, she wanted his help in getting old police files, and second, she wasn’t about to give him a reason to think that she gave last night a second thought.
As Hope searched her closet, she told herself she wasn’t looking for the perfect outfit to make the sheriff eat his heart out. She settled on what she would describe as a collision of city girl meets country girl. She dressed in a short turquoise sarong skirt, a turquoise silk halter, and her Tony Lama peacock-blue boots.
By the time she left for the sheriff’s office, her makeup looked perfectly natural, her hair volumized and the ends flipped slightly as if she hadn’t had to curl and spray them into submission.
The Pearl County sheriff’s office sat on the corner of Mercy and Main, and except for the shop advertising “click and shoot-Photos In An Hour,” the building took up the entire city block. The outside of the sandstone building was pocked with age, and metal bars covered the windows in back. A new parking lot had been poured on the east side of the structure and the inside was thoroughly modernized. It smelled of new paint and carpet, and sunshine spilled through the wide windows.
A female deputy, wearing a beige blouse with a gold-star patch sewn above her left breast, looked up from her computer terminal as Hope approached the information desk. She directed Hope through a set of double glass doors with a huge gold star in the middle and the words “Sheriff Dylan Taber” beneath. Inside the office was yet another woman, dressed like the first one. Her salt-and-pepper perm was too tight, and the nameplate proclaiming her to be Hazel Avery rested beside a plastic Jesus. Her desk sat in the middle of the room and squarely in front of a hallway. Hope wondered if, like Saint Peter, she was protecting the hall from heathen passage.
“You must be Hope Spencer,” Hazel said matter-of-factly as Hope moved toward her. “Ada told me about your boots.”
Hoped looked down at her feet. “I picked them up in a Western-wear store in Malibu.”
“Uh-huh.” Hazel clipped a ballpoint pen to a manila folder, then stood. “Come with me, please.”
Hope followed Hazel down the hall to the first room on the left. Directly across the hall was the sheriff’s office. The solid wooden door stood half open, and Dylan’s name was painted in black and etched in gold. A surprising flutter settled in the pit of Hope’s stomach, and she kept her gaze pinned on the two creases sewn into the back of Hazel’s starched shirt.
Once inside the room, the woman gave Hope instructions on how to fill out the victim’s complaint, and told her to describe the events as best as she could. Hope sat at a cleared desk and studied the form before her. There were certain “events” of the previous night that were a bit hazy. Others that she wished she could forget.
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“If you have any questions, I’ll answer them for you.” Then Hazel added just before she left, “So don’t bother the sheriff with any more of your flirty skirt.”
Flirty skirt? Hope wondered if flirty skirt was related to huckuty buck, or if her clothing had just been insulted. She shook her head and took a seat. What exactly did Hazel think she was going to do anyway?
She filled out her name, address, and the date, and with her head bent over the folder in front of her, she raised her gaze to the half-open door across the hall and was provided with a view of half a chrome-and-black desk, half a telephone, and half a computer terminal. Her attention focused on the big hands with long fingers pecking at the keyboard. The same big hands that had wrapped around her wrists and pinned them on either side of her head. She glimpsed beige cuffs and just a sliver of his black leather watch-band. He reached for a pen, rested his forearm on the desk, and, in a cramped, awkward fashion, scribbled something down.
Dylan was left-handed. He picked up the telephone receiver and tap-tap-tapped the desk with the pen. She could hear the muffled timber of his voice and the pleasure in his deep chuckle.
Hope turned her attention to the form in front of her and concentrated on everything that had happened inside the Buckhorn. She remembered walking in, ordering beer, and eavesdropping. She’d been so excited about the idea for a new article that the time had flown. Emmett Barnes had insisted on buying her drinks and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He got obnoxious. She got mouthy. Then the fight broke out, and she’d jumped on top of the table to get out of the way. The next thing she remembered was Dylan storming into the bar like the wrath of God and getting punched in the face. She remembered him hitting Emmett with a quick one-two and dropping him to the ground. Then he’d walked to her and helped her down from the table.
Her gaze returned to the room across the hall and the tapping pen. He’d touched her bare stomach with those fingers. He’d touched her and asked if she was okay, and for the first time in a long time, she’d remembered what it was like to feel protected by a man. But it hadn’t been real. She’d been drunk, and he’d been doing his job.
With a flourish, Hope signed the bottom of her statement and left the room. She handed Hazel the folder and watched her skim it.
“Lord help us,” Hazel said and flipped it close. “If the prosecutor needs anything else, he’ll be in touch.”
Hope glanced at the empty hallway one last time before leaving. Without looking back, she walked past the information desk and out the front door. But as she moved down the sidewalk and around to the parking lot, she felt somehow let down. She’d anticipated… what? Friendly conversation? A repeat of last night? Something.
A door on the side of the building opened and she glanced over her shoulder. Dylan stood at the top of the steps, his gaze directed at the duty belt he buckled at his waist. Without taking her eyes from him, Hope shoved her car key into the lock and watched Dylan walk down the concrete steps, his long legs closing the distance between them. He clipped some sort of microphone to the epaulet on his right shoulder. His full attention returned to adjusting his belt and he didn’t notice her. She couldn’t see his face for the shadow created by his black Stetson, but he appeared much as he had the first time she’d seen him. His tan dress shirt with the permanent creases sewn up his flat abdomen and chest. Star on one pocket, name badge on the other. Those tan trousers with the brown stripes up the sides. Hope had never been a sucker for a man in uniform, but she had to admit, Dylan made it look good. Then again, he made Levi’s look good, too.