Sawyer followed the fading beam as Shelby moved clockwise around the pond bouncing the light through the reeds, inching closer to the edge of the water. “Watch it,” he warned, “it gets pretty deep there—”
The beam disappeared in the loud splash of water that followed on the heels of Shelby’s scream. She fell in, just as Sawyer expected she would. He groaned and rubbed his eyes, wishing passionately that he had just arrested her when he had the chance.
“Oh, damn, it is cold—my hat. I lost my hat.” Shelby giggled hysterically.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I think I’m okay. I think I can manage. Oh crap. I’m stuck. Damn it’s cold!”
Sawyer cleared the fencing easily and waded in the freezing water to where he could hear her struggling in the reeds. It was pitch-black on the pond; the kind of black that only happens in the country. With the moon behind a cloud, Sawyer could barely make out Shelby’s head and upper torso. He caught her under her arms and pulled her up through the reeds to the bank. She was soaked to the shoulders. They were on their feet—frozen but not hypothermic though her teeth chattered ferociously and her sweater was dripping wet.
“Take that thing off before you freeze. I’ll give you my jacket.”
Shivering violently, Shelby pulled the turtleneck over her head. In that split second, the moon cleared the cloud and shone like an ice blue spotlight on her body. Sawyer stared with mild amazement at her breasts which were hard to miss under the circumstances. The white tank top she was wearing was undersized, soaking wet, and she wasn’t wearing a brassiere.
Shelby Porter was a woman. The shapeless black sweaters she favored were a great disguise. But she was a woman all right. She flipped the sweater to the ground and plastered her arms over her chest. “Are you going give me that jacket or what? It’s cold out here.”
Sawyer felt his face go hot. Shelby Porter was still Shelby Porter. “Sorry.” He yanked his jacket off and handed it to her.
She clutched it over her breasts as though she realized how much he could see. “What are you sorry about? It’s not your fault I fell in.”
Sawyer jerked his eyes to her face and met her puzzled frown. Strange unexpected thoughts crowded his brain. He wondered what her eyes were like without her glasses. He wondered what she was like in bed. She was staring at him like she was wondering the same thing about him.
Sawyer found his voice. “Are you warmer now?”
“Getting there. How about you? Your pant legs are soaked.”
“I’m all right.” Her cropped dark hair was pretty against her neck. Another thing he’d never noticed about her. “You better put that on.”
She shrugged her arms into the jacket. It swamped her. Shelby Porter, shivering and covered in mud couldn’t look at him for some reason. Wouldn’t meet his eyes. Sawyer stepped in and wordlessly drew the edges of the padded black uniform together and zipped it up. “I’m getting it dirty,” she said through chattering teeth. Her body shook. “I’ll have it cleaned.” Her hair smelled like rain. Sawyer held the lapels, unable to release her. The night air stilled around them. Seconds ticked by during which he didn’t frame a single thought. He only wanted.
He wanted Shelby Porter.
Abruptly, Sawyer dropped his hands and turned away. He marched to the fence, taking long strides. He knew he was lonely after Janice left for New York City, but Porter? Sawyer’s ex-fiancée had only been gone a couple of months; not long enough to be looking for a replacement—not nearly long enough for the replacement be Shelby Porter. His nemesis. His chief tormentor. The thorn in his side.
“Hey McIntyre, wait up!”
She was following him. Directly behind him in fact. The sexy growl now had a body to match. “Don’t worry about the jacket,” he called over his shoulder. “Leave it at the cleaners and they’ll charge it to the Sheriff’s Office.” He was hurrying now, leaping the fence and walking to the cruiser.
“Whatever you say, but where are we going? I haven’t finished my investigation.”
He stopped and turned. “You didn’t find a pump. I didn’t find a pump. There is no pump. End of investigation.”
“There’s a stench coming from that pit behind the sign. I want to check it out. I brought some sample bags with me. I can have the stuff analyzed in the morning.” Shelby pushed her glasses up on her nose.
Sawyer almost laughed. “That stench is raw sewage. You can go down and get a sample if you like. I’ll wait for you here.”
She peered at him suspiciously. “How do you know what it is?”
“Because Ryan called the office yesterday to tell me one of his men hit a septic tank—a relic from the old farmstead that used to be here. They’re pumping it first thing in the morning.” Sawyer spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. “But I understand if you can’t take my word for it, Porter. If you want to go down and check it out, by all means....
“No, it’s okay. I think, for once, Ryan wasn’t lying. Raw sewage has a distinctive odor.” Her nose wrinkled. “I’ll let it go this time but there’s something here. I feel it.”
“With your spidey sense?”
“Still reading comic books, I see. I’m glad you can laugh. Something’s going on here and when I prove it, I’m going to let the public know I gave the sheriff a chance to pursue the investigation and he made jokes instead.” She jerked her head. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Sawyer gritted his teeth and led the way to the patrol car. He opened the back door. “Get in.” But Shelby wasn’t behind him. She had stopped in her tracks and was frowning at the huge McIntyre Construction sign.
“A pump? They’re pumping first thing in the morning?” She looked at her watch. “It’s almost that now. I’m too damned early. My source had the wrong hour.”
“It’s a septic pump—oh, what’s the point!” Sawyer took her elbow and steered her to the cruiser. “In.”
“Hey! There is such a thing as freedom of the press. What are you afraid of? Does Ryan have plans to drain that pond and you have to get me out of here before the truck arrives?”
“For the last time, although I have a feeling that nothing is ever the last time with you, Ryan is following the law. Even if he decides to break the goodwill contract he made with the environmentalists, he isn’t breaking the law! The pond belongs to his development and he can do what he wants with it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s what you think.”
“Shelby,” he warned, “you better have ironclad proof before you accuse him of something in print. You have nothing in evidence. Ryan will break you and the paper if you libel him.”
“I know the rules of publishing, Sawyer. I have a good story and I’m going to run with it.”
“Get in the car. I’ll drive you to that jalopy of yours.”
“I can walk.”
“It’s not a request, Miss Porter.”
Shelby climbed in the back seat, her face sulky. As Sawyer concentrated on backing out the construction site, he met her dark eyes in the rearview mirror. The cruiser’s windows had fogged in the damp October air, closing them in. Somehow something had changed between them.
He wasn’t attracted to Shelby Porter—although he was probably attracted to her breasts. But at this point, the sight of any woman’s breasts would have that effect on him. He couldn’t help it, it was a biological reflex. That was Sawyer’s excuse for this weird energy between them. He saw Porter as a sexual being for the first time in the history of their sheriff-reporter relationship.
What was hers?
Shelby Porter was staring at Sheriff Sawyer McIntyre like she was seeing him for the first time.
Chapter Two: For the Love of Dolly
A FIGURE was on the porch, pacing back and forth under the feeble yellow light when Shelby pulled up to her adopted aunt’s sprawling Queen Anne home.
“Shelby? Is that you?”
The thin familiar voice sounded very scared and very cold. Shelby’s heart caught in her
throat and she quickened her step along the path. “Aunt Dolly, what is it? What are you doing out here?” Shelby slung an arm over the frail shoulders and was alarmed by the shaking that seized Dolly’s body. The older woman tried to answer but her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn’t speak. “You’re freezing!”
“I locked myself out,” Dolly moaned.
Shelby dug the house key out of the pocket of her jeans. “What were you doing out of the house at this time of night in the first place?” Anxiety made her irritable and she jammed the key in the lock impatiently. Dolly was going to land in the hospital again if she kept this up.
“I w-was looking f-for you.” Dolly shook violently. “And the d-door slammed shut.”
Shelby supported the older woman around her waist, half-carrying her up the stairs. “I told you I had to work tonight. You’ve got to stop fretting about me before you drive yourself to an early grave. I’m a grown woman and I’ve got a job to do. You can’t go out looking for me in your night gown every time I’m off chasing a lead.”
Dolly gripped Shelby’s wrist when they reached the top of the stairs. The effort it took the older woman to make the climb was written in her face; she looked gray and the lines scoring her cheeks had deepened. Her aunt’s health was frail but Shelby hadn’t realized how frail until this moment. She remembered the scare she had this summer when she came home to find her unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. A mild stroke the doctor had said, but it was a signal to take it easy. Dolly was seventy-six and didn’t expect to live forever, but she still had a few good years ahead and Shelby was determined she wouldn’t spend them incapacitated by a heart attack. She would do anything it took to give her aunt the peace she needed to live out her remaining years happily. Obviously, she was blowing it.
She settled Dolly into bed with an electric heating pad to warm her and tucked the comforter securely about her thin shoulders. Shelby waited until the shivering had subsided before pressing her fingers to Dolly’s pulse. The beat was faint but fast.
“Dolly, please,” Shelby begged, “you know what Dr. Richardson said. You have to relax.”
“How am I supposed to relax with you running all over the county at all hours of the night?” Dolly scowled, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion.
“You were asleep when I left. I was trying to get back without waking you. You get yourself all worked up over nothing. I’m twenty-nine years old! I don’t take foolish chances. Please, you have to stop worrying about me and take care of yourself. You’re not supposed to stress.”
“It’s not my fault I have a niece who enjoys stirring up trouble and worrying me to death. Why do you always have to investigate every story; isn’t that what you hired Trevor to do?”
“Trevor is still green. He doesn’t know how to chase a lead yet.”
“Then what good is he? It isn’t right for a young woman to be out at night alone.” Dolly squinted at Shelby in the light from her bedside lamp. “You’re wet and you’ve got some sort of gunk in your hair.”
“Pond scum. I fell in.”
“Shelby!” Dolly closed her eyes in a familiar expression of exasperation.
“The paper is my job, Aunt Dolly,” she explained patiently. “The only job I’ve had since I graduated from university. It never used to bother you when I went after a story. Why now?”
Dolly’s eyes clouded. “I’m old, Shelby. I hoped to live long enough to see you married.”
Shelby grimaced. “You just want to be the mother of a bride—any bride. Even one that isn’t your blood relative.”
Dolly caught her hand and gazed at her imploringly. “Oh Shelby, sweetheart, would it be too awful to get married before I die? I know I’m asking a great deal, but is there no chance for you and that Roger fellow you were seeing last winter?”
Shelby passed a hand over her eyes. She was very tired. Too tired to get into a discussion about Roger Cutter. Their relationship ended in the summer after Roger announced he was reconciling with his wife. That Roger had a wife in the first place, albeit estranged from, was bad enough, but to hear in the same breath that he was dumping Shelby to go back to that wife was devastating. It shouldn’t have been; she realized that now. She should’ve looked into Roger’s story before falling in love with him. But since he didn’t behave like someone’s sneaking, lying, cheating husband, it never occurred to Shelby that he was. According to Roger’s therapist, (as Roger explained to Shelby after he’d dropped his two bombs) she was his transition relationship. Seeing Shelby had empowered him to finally make a commitment to his wife. “So it’s all good,” he’d said solemnly.
For Roger and his wife, maybe. For the transition girl, not so much.
Under the circumstances, marriage to Roger was definitely out. Shelby smiled at Dolly. “Roger’s gone for good, honey, and I can’t say I’m sorry. He wasn’t suitable husband material.”
Dolly nodded distractedly. Her coal black eyes clouded and swam as she scratched at her cheek with a long brightly painted fingernail; a sure sign she was worried. Shelby pulled the withered hand away from her aunt’s face. “What am I going to do with you, Dolly? What’s the point of going to see a doctor every week if you’re not going to do what he says? I don’t see what difference it makes if I’m married or not. I don’t understand why it bothers you so much.”
“I know you, Shelby Diane Porter. Without me here you’ll lose yourself in that damned newspaper of yours and wind up living with cats.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a couple of cats. They leave the toilet seat down and they never want to know what’s for dinner.”
Dolly made a gesture of disgust. “Make a joke of it. You young women think you have all the time in the world to start a family. You’ll be alone, Shelby, and you’ve had too many years of that already. More than your share.”
“No, I haven’t. I was adopted by a nagging old woman when I was twelve and I’ve spent the last seventeen years just wishing I was alone.”
Dolly giggled; a warm tinkling sound that loosened the knot of tension at the base of Shelby’s neck.
“You had me wrapped around your little finger the day you walked into my living room with that scowl on your face and you know it.”
“You could have fooled me. You were the toughest foster mother I’d ever come up against.” Shelby snuggled against Dolly’s feeble warmth. “You taught me how to take care of myself. So let me do it.”
“I thought I was teaching you to accept love.”
Shelby sighed and looked away. “I accept love when I’m offered it.”
“You don’t give many of us the opportunity.” Dolly’s voice softened. “I’m one of the lucky few allowed in: Mandrake Falls, the Gazette and Dolly Porter. I’ve failed you, Shelby.”
“And here’s me thinking I’ve failed you. I wish I could reassure you—”
“It’s all right, dear. It’s not your job to reassure me. I’ll try to not worry myself so much.”
Shelby saw the confusion and sadness in Dolly’s eyes and her stomach twisted knowing she was the cause. Her aunt was often a silly, fanciful woman but she was abundantly kind and loving and fair to Shelby through some pretty tumultuous years. Dolly would be the first person to tell her she didn’t owe her a thing, but if she could give her aunt some peace of mind was it wrong? “I won’t be alone, Dolly,” Shelby began, recalling that strange moment with the sheriff at the construction site. “Because I’ve kind of met someone.”
Dolly sat upright and peered at Shelby with suppressed hope in her eyes. “When did this happen?”
“Tonight.” She stalled, squirming. The lie was growing before she had the chance to think it through. “It happened suddenly. It was a surprise to both of us.” Shelby got to her feet and paced the room, embarrassed by the mountain she was making out of that brief encounter with Sawyer. “There’s a man. He’s interesting and I like him so you don’t have to worry anymore.”
“Who?” Dolly demanded. Shelby could see suspicion warri
ng with curiosity in her aunt’s dark eyes.
“Uh....” Shelby looked around as though a name would materialize out of the wallpaper.
“It’s Sawyer isn’t it!” Dolly’s voice popped like a firecracker. “You’ve got his jacket on—his Sheriff’s jacket. I only just noticed it this minute when you got up. Oh Shelby, you’ve made me so happy. Is my godson the man you’re seeing?”
A shiver of horror rippled through Shelby. Involved with Sawyer?
But if she thought about it, that wasn’t false. They were definitely involved with each other—negatively involved—but involved. And Shelby did see him tonight. And after falling in the pond, the sheriff saw more of her than was decent. Shelby calculated her reply. Dolly had always been close to Sawyer but since his engagement to Janice Feron two years ago, she’d lost touch with her godson. And her illness had kept her practically bedridden for the past couple of months. Dolly hadn’t seen Sawyer in weeks. Ironically, that made Sheriff Sawyer McIntyre the perfect fake boyfriend. Introductions wouldn’t be required because Dolly already knew him and liked him, and yet their paths rarely crossed.
It could work. Shelby mulled Sawyer over, rolling his looks around in her brain. There was the dark thick hair, trimmed for his office, midnight blue eyes that looked straight into you and a sensuous mouth. He was tall and filled out a uniform nicely. There was a kind of animal magnetism about Sawyer—a reserve of sexuality that he seemed to be holding in—not her type—but Shelby could see why most of the women in Mandrake Falls had envied Janice Feron.
“Yes,” she said briskly, ‘it’s Sawyer. So you see—you have nothing to worry about so you can relax and begin living your life again. Deal?”
Before Dolly could answer, Shelby blew her a quick good-night kiss and reached for the light.
“No! Not yet, please?” Dolly sounded as excited as a nine-year-old. “I want to hear all about it. I thought you and Sawyer hated each other. You’ve never gotten along and lately you’ve implied the most dreadful things about him in your editorials.”
Lie For Me: Autumn (Mandrake Falls Series Romance Book 2) Page 2
