CHAPTER ONE
ROSALIEPARKMANFIGUREDin most towns that it wasn’t a common occurrence to see a bunch of people dressed like Sherlock Holmes squaring off with another group of Hogwarts wannabes. But this was Last Ride, Texas, where folks took their favorite books seriously.
Or rather, they took their book-club meetings seriously.
It appeared the two groups were about to have a smackdown over a scheduling screwup at the library where they held their monthly meetings, and they had taken their fight to the steps of the Last Ride Police Department. Rosalie put her money on the Hogwarts fans because they looked capable of kicking some butt.
She threaded her way through them, bumping into a couple of deerstalker hats and crooked wizard wands before making it to the center of the group, where her cousin, Deputy Azzie Parkman, was in the process of dispersing the arguing, accusations-flinging crowd. Rosalie mentally amended her prediction as to who would win this literary squabble.
Azzie would, no doubts about that.
Even though her cousin was in her early seventies, Azzie could have taken on both groups, along with a horde of vampires and zombies. In any postapocalyptic world, Rosalie would want Azzie on her side.
Rosalie finally managed to get inside the police department, where both her feet and her heart immediately skittered to a stumbling stop. So did her eyes as they landed on yet another deputy. Not a cousin this time. But the only man she’d ever toldthe three-word sentence, the one that started withI, ended withyouand had theLword in the middle.
Gabriel McCloud.
Or rather,DeputyGabriel McCloud, though he hadn’t been a lawman back when she’d bared her soul to him. He’d been a star of the Last Ride High School football team and her boyfriend. She had muttered those three words to him while they’d been slow dancing at their high school graduation party. Not only had he not muttered them back, two days later he’d sent her a breakup letter and left Last Ride.
Now, fifteen years later, he was back, looking far better than she wanted him to look and apparently still capable of making her knees weak and her stomach flutter. Even her heart got in on the reaction. It was racing and jumping, reminding her of an overzealous puppy greeting its owner.
Gabriel was talking to someone on the phone, but he obviously spotted her from across the desk-cluttered open room where the town’s dozen or so deputies worked. Though today all the desks were unoccupied except for his. Probably because it was lunchtime and Azzie was outside.
Their gazes collided, his deep brown eyes meeting her blue ones, and Rosalie cursed when she felt herself go warm in all the wrong places. Really? After all this time he could still do that to her as well?
Apparently so.
But Rosalie had no intention of rushing into his arms like that overzealous puppy to tell him how glad she was to see him. Did she?
No, she assured herself. She didn’t.
“Rosalie,” Gabriel said in that drawl that sounded like foreplay—something they’d done plenty of back in the day. But never the actual deed. No, Gabriel hadn’t even given her thatpinnacle of memories, and Rosalie had never been able to figure out if that was good or bad.
Most times, like now, she leaned toward it being bad.
Yes, she had plenty of memories of Gabriel, specifically of them steaming up his truck windows during their make-out sessions, but he hadn’t given her the ultimate memory of being her first lover. Nope. He’d skirted around that by giving her a couple of orgasms during their five months of dating. And then he’d sent her that goodbye letter and left Last Ride to join the military.
He hadn’t asked her to go with him. Or wait for him. Or do anything else to secure a commitment that he clearly hadn’t been ready to make. That was probably the reason he hadn’t had sex with her when he’d had plenty of opportunities to do so.
“Gabriel,” she greeted him back. She took a couple of deep breaths to steel herself up and hoped he hadn’t noticed the effect he still had on her.
He’d noticed.
It was subtle, but she heard the almost silent sigh, and was that dread she saw in his eyes? Maybe. Perhaps he thought she’d come here to have it out with him on his first week on the job. She hadn’t. In fact, Rosalie likely would have just tried to avoid him—not actually possible in such a small town—but she certainly wouldn’t have shown up in the very place where he was sure to be unless she’d had to.
“I heard you’d moved back,” she said, trying to keep her voice pleasant. Trying not to snarl over him having broken her heart.
He nodded. Just nodded. What he didn’t do was get into an explanation for his return, but it wasn’t possible to avoid hearing gossip here either, so Rosalie had gotten the gist of it. Gabriel had been an Air Force security policeman and had been injured. He’d spent a long time in a hospital in Germany before someone, maybe Gabriel himself, had decided that it was timefor him to get out of the military. He’d then accepted the deputy job that his good pal Sheriff Matt Corbin had offered him.
Gabriel glanced out through the large window at Azzie, and he sighed again. “She didn’t want help,” he muttered.
“She doesn’t need help,” Rosalie assured him. “Trust me on that.”
Gabriel didn’t dispute it, and even though he was a newbie here in the Last Ride PD, he likely knew all about Azzie’s supercop skill set. Of course, Gabriel probably fit into that supercop category himself, but unlike Azzie, he wasn’t wearing a uniform. Like some of the other deputies, he’d gone with nice jeans and cowboy boots. He was also wearing a shirt that fit his still-amazing chest to a T.
Rosalie swallowed hard and shook her head to clear it. Getting on with business, which didn’t include any more lustful thoughts about Gabriel, she peered past him and into the sheriff’s office.
“The sheriff went home for lunch,” Gabriel supplied, obviously following her gaze. “Something I can help you with?”