by Sandra Brown
Sunny shoved herself away from him, seething with anger over his amusement, which he didn’t have the good manners to hide. Actually Sunny was just as angry with herself as she was with him. She, who had lived alone in New Orleans for years, had let her imagination run away with her and had behaved like a complete fool. He would think she was an idiot.
With a broad sweep of her hand, she pushed her tangled hair back. “How do I know you’re the sheriff?”
With that same drawl and the lowering of one eyelid, he said, “Wanna see my pistol?”
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was more subtle than his innuendo. Her eyes became slits of fury. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Did you ask?”
“What were you doing sneaking around my house in the middle of the night?”
“I was responding to your call for help. Arleta, the operator, said you sounded scared out of your wits.”
“I was!”
“Are you always such a ’fraidy cat?”
“Of course not. What were you doing out in the shed?”
“What shed?”
“You mean that wasn’t you?”
“You mean there really was a suspicious noise?”
“Why else would I call?” Sunny cried.
He hooked his thumbs beneath the waistband of his tight jeans and cocked his head to one side. “I figured that you invented this ‘intruder’ just to get me out here.”
“You arrogant sonofa—” Rage flickered like flames in her eyes. “I heard something out in the shed,” she said, pointing in the direction of the kitchen.
A deep crease of genuine worry formed between his brows. “Then I’d better take a look. You stay here.”
Disobeying, she followed him into the kitchen on tiptoes. She watched as he opened the back door, unlatched the screen, and stepped through it. The moon cast enough light to make him a tall silhouette as he crossed the yard. He had brought a flashlight with him and turned it on, shining it into the dense forest that surrounded the cabin. When her father bought the property, he had cleared only enough land to build the cabin. By design they had left the wooded lot as virgin as possible.
From behind the screen door, Sunny watched Beaumont disappear around the far side of the shed. She could see the flashlight’s beam arcing over the pier and through the trees. It seemed to take forever before he came back into view. He switched off the flashlight before reentering the kitchen.
She moved aside, holding the screen door open for him. “Well?”
“You had intruders, all right.”
“Intruders, plural?”
“Four,” he said grimly.
Her face paled. “Four.”
“Yep, a mama raccoon and three babies.”
Sunny opened her mouth to speak, decided that anything she said would only make her look more ridiculous, and shut her mouth quickly. Her teeth clicked together in the sudden silence.
“They were stashing leftovers behind a row of buckets,” he told her. She kept her head down and could all but feel his damned blue eyes boring a hole into the top of it. The thought of him laughing at her was untenable.
She raised her head suddenly. “It’s partially your fault,” she shouted accusingly. “All that talk about window peepers and wackos.”
“You brought up the window peepers, not me.” He casually laid his flashlight on the kitchen table. “Got a cup of coffee?”
“No.”
She could see his wide smile in the darkness. “Not even for the trooper who rescued you from a family of rampaging raccoons?”
She planted her fists on her hips. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
He righted the chair she had overturned and plopped down in it, sitting more on his spine than his bottom. He grinned up at her. “Well, you gotta admit that the scenery is breathtaking.”
When Sunny realized that she had nothing on but the scanty nightgown and that her stance was stretching the sheer cloth tightly across her breasts, her arms dropped to her sides. She spun around and went charging out of the kitchen.
The mess from the drawer lay directly in her path of retreat. She broke one of the pencils under her foot, while her other heel made contact with the head of the nail. Cursing in a most unladylike fashion, she hobbled out of the kitchen.
Minutes later she returned dressed in a tank T-shirt and a pair of shorts. The light in the kitchen was on and Ty already had a pot of coffee perking on the gas range.
“Make yourself at home.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he replied, “Thanks, I already did.”
She went to the cabinet and began taking down cups and saucers. “Cream and sugar?”
“Black’s fine. Got any cookies?”
She rolled her eyes ceilingward and produced a package of cookies from the pantry, which she had stocked for her week’s stay.
“Just for the record,” he mumbled around a big bite of chocolate-frosted cookie, “I liked the other outfit better.”
“No doubt.”
“Although this one has distinct possibilities.”
On the word “distinct,” his eyes slid down to her breasts. It was evident that she wasn’t wearing a bra under the soft knit fabric that molded to her figure. The longer he looked at her, the more evident it became.
Sunny tried to cover her discomfiture with a snide question. “Do the taxpayers of Latham Green have any idea that their sheriff is a sex fiend?”
He chuckled. “I’m on duty.”
“Somehow I don’t find that very reassuring.”
“Well, you should. If I weren’t on duty, I’d have you in bed by now.”
“Not a chance, Mr. Beaumont.”
His grin reeked of self-confidence. “It’s ready.” He grinned wickedly at her start of surprise. “The coffee, Sunny. The co fee is ready.”
She poured, trying not to think about him looking at the bare backs of her thighs, which she was certain he was doing. “How long have you been sheriff?” she asked, setting a full cup of coffee in front of him.
“Since I got here. I moved here specifically to take the job.”
“And before that?” She sat down across from him and sipped her coffee.
For the first time since he’d asked her to dance the night before, his eyes stopped smiling. In fact, they turned hard and cold. The deep vertical clefts on both sides of his mouth no longer resembled laugh lines. “Before that I was somewhere else.”
“Oh.”
Sunny got the message. His past wasn’t open for review. She envied him that. She wished hers wasn’t. In New Orleans she was safe. No one knew about the debacle with Don Jenkins. Her friends there knew she had moved to the city from a small town, but no one had ever pressed her for information about herself. She appreciated that.
That’s why she honored Ty Beaumont’s need for privacy now, even though he was the most aggravating man she’d ever met. She refrained from asking him any probing questions and filled the yawning silence by nibbling on a cookie.
He was the first to speak. “Did you have an accident?”
Sunny followed the jutting motion of his chin down to the floor, where the debris from the drawer was still scattered. She laughed with self-derision. “I was going to look up George Henderson’s telephone number and check you out.”
“He would have felt obliged to give you a glowing report. He works for me.”
“George is a law officer?”
“My deputy.”
Sunny shook her head with disbelief. “I remember when he stole watermelons.”
“I think he still does.”
They laughed together, and it felt good. A little too good for Sunny to feel truly comfortable about it. When their laughter subsided, she realized just how intimate the setting and situation were. “It’s getting late.” She practically snatched Ty’s coffee cup away from him and carried it along with hers to the sink.
“Are you limping?”
“It’s nothing,” she said with a neg
ligent shrug as she replaced the package of cookies in the pantry.
“It’s something.”
She lifted her foot off the floor, holding her leg out straight at a thirty-degree angle. “My knee found the head of that nail when I went down on all fours. See?” She indicated the tiny red mark on her knee. “Nothing to it.”
“That’s not enough to make you limp.”
“I stubbed my toe, too.”
“What else?”
“Nothing,” she stressed.
“What?” Though Ty spoke the question softly, it conveyed his determination to get the truth from her.
“I stepped on the damn nail,” she cried in frustration. “Okay?”
“Not okay. Sit.” He sternly pointed at the chair she had vacated.
“It’s time you left, Sheriff.”
“If you don’t let me check your foot, I’ll feel that it’s my professional duty to take you to the hospital. Then the whole story about the raccoons and the window-peeper scare will be the topic of conversation at the beauty parlor tomorrow and—”
Sunny’s fanny landed hard in the chair.
“That’s better,” Ty said, and smiled. “Give me your foot.”
She didn’t actually offer her foot for his inspection. He bent forward and picked it up off the floor, unbalancing her so that her bottom slid almost to the rim of her seat. Bracing herself with stiff arms and hands that curled over the edge of the chair, she watched as his large, tanned hands enfolded her foot.
He turned it up and examined the sole. “Here?” He touched the crescent-shaped wound on her heel. She winced. “Sore?”
“With you mashing on it, it is.”
“Helluva bruise. You’re lucky it didn’t break the skin. Almost, but not quite. You don’t need a tetanus shot, but you might want to watch it for the next few days.”
“I will. Thanks.” She tried to pull her foot away, but to no avail. He closed his hands around it, enclosing it firmly and snugly between his palms.
“They’re a little skinny, but otherwise you have very nice feet.”
“Is this part of your official duty, Sheriff Beaumont?”
“My duty is to aid and abet the citizens of Latham Parish. Right now, I think this citizen needs a foot rub.”
She squirmed in her chair when his thumb drew a sizzling line down the center of her sole. In a bizarre and titillating correlation, the caress tickled the back of her throat.
“I was in Japan once.” He brushed his thumb over her toes and examined each glossy toenail. “They give fantastic foot rubs there. This geisha—”
“I’m really not interested.”
“—used a lot of lotion on her hands. Got any?”
“We’ll do without.”
“Suit yourself. Anyway, this geisha had a way of squeezing each individual toe between her fingers. Hard, but not enough to hurt. Kinda like sucking.”
He matched action to words by wringing Sunny’s middle toe between his strong fingers. She felt the caress in every other part of her body, especially the erogenous ones. The caress even looked erotic. The backs of his fingers were sprinkled with fine blond hairs. His hands looked dark, manly, and masterful against her slender foot.
In quick succession, forbidden sensations rippled out of Sunny’s middle. When he massaged the base of each toe on the underside of her foot, she almost sprang out of her chair. “I don’t think this is proper.”
He grinned unrepentantly. “I bet it isn’t. But it sure as hell feels good, doesn’t it? Let’s treat ourselves. After all, you suffered a scare and I saved your life. I think we’re due some R and R. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Sunny found his coaxing voice and bedroom expression almost as hypnotic as the foot massage. She offered no resistance when he wedged her heel into the notch between his thighs.
“Then this geisha, after milking each muscle and bone in my foot, massaged only the very tips of my toes. Like this. Tiny circles. Sometimes so light I thought I was imagining her touch.”
Sunny actually gasped at the startling sensations that shot like rockets up her leg. Reflexively, her foot moved, pressing itself more firmly against his fly. She dared not think of what was filling her high arch.
“Of course, they say,” Ty continued in that mesmerizing voice, “that the most delicious sensation is to have them tongued.”
Sunny’s eyes slid closed.
The next thing she knew she was catching herself to keep from falling off her chair. He had peremptorily lowered her foot back to the floor and was dusting his hands as though he had just completed a chore.
“But tonguing cost extra and I was just a poor G.I. low on cash, so I can’t claim to have experienced that particular pleasure firsthand. Can you?” he asked guilelessly.
Furious over her own culpability, Sunny bounded out of her chair and said coldly, “It’s time you left.”
Past time. Way past time, she was thinking. Was she crazy, allowing him to touch her like that? Talk to her so outrageously? She stamped out of the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. She wanted to fill the cabin up with light, noise, anything to dispel the pervasive aura of privacy.
“Thank you for coming.” By the time he followed her into the common room, she was already at the front door, ungraciously holding it open for him.
“That’s what they pay me for.”
“How did you get here so fast, anyway?”
“I was already here.”
“Already here?”
He nodded. “I had driven out to check on you.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I got worried about those wackos, too.”
“There weren’t any wackos.”
“But we didn’t know that for sure. And if you couldn’t handle a family of raccoons, how do you think you’d stand up against a wacko?”
“Good night, Mr. Beaumont.”
“I was almost here when they radioed my patrol car that you suspected a prowler and needed help. Didn’t you see my headlights?”
Feeling the greater fool, she avoided his mocking eyes. “No, I didn’t. I was in the kitchen. Now I feel all safe and sound, knowing that you’re patrolling the lake.”
“Why did you panic when you heard the noise? Why didn’t you just get your gun?”
“Gun?”
“The one you threatened to shoot me with this afternoon if I didn’t get off your dock.”
“I didn’t—my father probably took it when...I don’t know where...It wasn’t loaded.”
“What is this, multiple choice?”
She glared at him.
“Are you sure there was a gun?”
“Good night, Mr. Beaumont,” she repeated through clenched teeth.
“What’s all this?”
Ty’s attention had been attracted to the table, where several sketch pads were spread out. The pencil sketches were, for the most part, unfinished.
Sunny sighed heavily, making no effort to conceal her annoyance. She slammed the open front door closed because it was letting mosquitoes in. “Drawings.”
“Bugs?” he asked, holding up one of her sketches and eyeing it critically.
“It’s a dragonfly.”
“Dragonflies again. Are they your hobby or something? You’re not a very good artist,” he remarked candidly.
She yanked the sketch away from him and returned it to the table. “And you’re not a very good sheriff. You don’t even wear a uniform.”
He was dressed in jeans and a plain white shirt, which looked anything but plain on him. The sleeves were rolled up his forearms to just below his elbows. The white cotton set off his deep tan and piercing blue eyes. It even matched the smile he flashed down at her.
“But I’ve got a silver badge and a patrol car with flashing lights. If you’re nice I’ll take you for a ride in it sometime.”
“I doubt that being nice would win a woman any points with you, Mr. Beaumont.”
He tipped his head toward her
as though to say, “Score one for you.” Still, his smile wasn’t one of contrition. He had almost reached the door when he stopped abruptly, snapped his fingers, and said, “Oops, forgot my flashlight.” He retraced his steps into the kitchen.
Sunny waited by the front door. What was taking so long? she wondered when a minute passed and he didn’t reappear. “Mr. Beaumont?” she called. Nothing. Impatiently, she tapped her bare foot against the floor.
Another minute went by and he still didn’t come back. Curious and vexed, Sunny went into the kitchen after him. She found him leaning against the countertop studying his wristwatch.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Come here,” he said, keeping his eyes on the face of his watch.
Intrigued, she padded over to the counter and joined him in watching his wristwatch. It wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, certainly nothing so captivating as to absorb him this way. The second hand was sweeping its way up toward the twelve.
“Five, four, three, two, one,” Ty said, counting down.
“So? What does that mean?”
“That means, Sunny Chandler, that you’re in serious trouble.”
He turned, and by doing so, pinned her in the corner where the cabinets met and blocked off her escape with his body. He braced his hands on both sides of her hips and leaned into her. “It’s midnight.”
“Is this where you turn back into a rat?”
He laughed. “In a manner of speaking. I’m officially off duty.”
She glowered at his grinning face. “Get away from me.”
“Ah, come on, Sunny. Be a sport.” He took a strand of her hair between his fingers and whisked it back and forth across her neck. “I just got off work after a hard day. I had to break up a fight between two dads at the Little League ballgame, track down a lost kid, and arrest a guy for DWI. Not to mention patrolling the riotous streets of Latham Green and rescuing a hysterical woman from a herd of raccoons. Or is it a pack of raccoons?” He shrugged. “Anyway, you get my drift. It’s time to play. Don’t you want to play with me?”
“No. And will you—” Her sentence ended on a gasp of surprise. “What are you doing?”
“Feeling your heart.” He laid his hand over the top curve of her breast. “When I came in, I could see your pulse pounding. Here.” He pressed her breast. “And here.” He settled his lips against the base of her throat and planted a sweet kiss there. “Know what?” He slid his hand just inside her tank top. “I think it’s pounding just as hard now.”
