The Sheriff's Daughter

by Jessica Andersen

  As though she read his mind, or perhaps his expression, Nancy frowned and poked him in the ribs, right at the ticklish spot few people knew about. “You’re a good man, Logan, and heaven knows you’ve got more book smarts than me. But don’t go thinking you can make decisions for Samantha the way you did for me when we were growing up.”

  Logan heard the words, but rejected the logic of them. “If I hadn’t introduced you to Steve—”

  “I would have met him on my own,” she interrupted firmly. “Somehow.” She pushed away, straightened her clothes and glanced at Cage, who waited discreetly in the elevator lobby. Then she touched Logan’s arm. “Give her a chance to make up her own mind, okay?”

  He held still for a moment, torn between the desire to take Sam for his own for however long it was possible, and the sure knowledge that it wasn’t fair. She de served better. Finally, he dropped his chin and muttered, “It’s not that simple.”

  “Now you’re getting it.” Nancy flashed him a quick, impish grin that took fifteen years off her face, then immediately sobered. “Walk me out. Cage will want to know what happened tonight.”

  Logan kept his thorough report brief, knowing it would leave his boss as mystified as he was.

  Sure enough, Cage frowned. “If Trehern has a contract out on you—and by extension, Sam—then why did William skip not one, but two opportunities to kill you?”

  “He says there’s no contract.” Logan jammed his hands in his pockets and resisted the urge to check on Sam. She’d been in the bathroom too long, it seemed.

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. But he said…” Logan frowned, trying to remember William’s exact words. “He said, ‘You’ll know I’m telling the truth soon enough.’ Then he drove me home, locked me in my truck, and from what Sam said about hearing noises and feeling like there was someone else in the garage, I think he waited around to make sure I came to okay.”

  Or maybe he simply wanted to think that. He didn’t know anymore. Fatigue pulsed from his temples all the way to his toes, and he felt an almost physical pull toward the apartment. Toward Sam. Toward the bedroom.

  No. The two don’t go together, his conscious mind argued. But other parts of him disagreed.

  “I’ll look into it,” Cage promised, then looked to ward the elevator, where Nancy awaited him. “And I’ll keep Nance safe while we wait on word of Stephen. I promise.”

  He was one of the few men Logan would hold to a promise like that, one of the few he’d trust with family. And that was a lucky thing. With so many of the HFH personnel in Tehru, it was pretty much just the two of them.

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” Logan agreed, and turned back toward the apartment, where Sam still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom. Worry tickled the back of his brain.

  “Hey.” Cage waited until he turned back before asking, “Do you think it’s possible the attacks weren’t ordered by Trehern?”

  Denial was almost knee-jerk. It had to be Trehern. Had to. But because Cage’s expression demanded honesty, Logan shook his head. “I don’t know anymore. But if it’s not him, then who else?”

  “You got any other enemies?”

  Logan shook his head, having already been through the short list. “Nobody else who’d profit from having me out of the picture.” At least he didn’t think so.

  “What about Sam?”

  He snorted. “Come on. That’s ridiculous.” But when Cage didn’t share the grin, Logan thought about it for a second. And sobered. The shots had been aimed at her front door. The brake lines on her truck cut, maybe at Bellamy Farms. He shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. “I don’t know. She has an ex-husband and an old boyfriend. And her father was the Black Horse sheriff for a long time.”

  “Think someone might want to get back at him?”

  The pattern of attacks shifted in Logan’s mind, though didn’t quite fit. “Maybe.” He glanced toward the apartment. Heard a door open and shut. He turned toward the sound, needing to see her, to check the wound on her arm and make sure she was okay. “I’ll ask her.”

  “Do that. And, Logan? Be gentle, okay? This has been a hell of a wild few days for a small-town vet.”

  It had been a stressful few days for a city-doctor-turned-operative, too, but Logan didn’t voice the thought. He simply nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  And he feared it would soon get wilder.

  SAM STIFFENED when she heard the door close. Though she was in the kitchen area with her back to the door, she knew Logan had stayed behind when the others left. She sensed his energy pulsing through the connected rooms, felt his presence tingle along the nerves on the back of her neck and the sides of her arms, which were bared by the T-shirt she’d donned after her shower.

  Goose bumps rose on her skin and she didn’t bother to brush them away. It wouldn’t have changed a thing.

  The electricity would still be there.

  “Sam.”

  She turned at the single, soft word and their eyes locked across the kitchen. Even though from the ten minutes she’d spent locked in the bathroom after tend ing the shallow scrape on her arm, she’d thought herself cried dry of fear and emotion, a new feeling surged through her now. Hot, liquid wanting.

  Reaction, she told herself. Proximity. That was all it was, nothing more. The click of sexual chemistry she’d felt from the first, magnified by the shared danger, by the relief that he was alive. Unhurt.

  She took a deep breath and meant to ask whether he’d like a post-midnight snack. But instead she heard herself say, “I thought you were dead. In the truck, I thought you were dead.”

  And the idea had hit her harder than she’d expected, harder than she’d wanted, just as the relief she’d felt when he first spoke had nearly washed her away.

  It had been more than simple joy that another human being was alive, or that a friend hadn’t been badly hurt.

  No, it had been soul-deep release at the knowledge that he, Logan, was alive. That he was still around, that there was still time for them to make it work.

  But make what work? Their relationship, like her others, was doomed from the start.

  Yet she couldn’t find it in her heart to care about the inevitable end. Not tonight.

  “Sam, we need to talk.” His expression was serious, his tone bordering on dire, but his eyes told a different story. Amber ringed with dark, they glowed with a nearly feral light as he moved farther into the kitchen, shrinking the space with his sheer presence.

  Like hers, his body and emotions seemed to be telling a different story than his brain and voice.

  He crowded her into the corner beside the refrigerator. The rounded edge of the cool marble counter pressed into her lower back and the warmth of his body seared her chest and belly. She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Talk about what?”

  “William swears it’s not Trehern after us.” Logan glanced at her mouth, then back to her eyes.

  The case. He was talking about the investigation. The danger. Not them. But as her conscious mind seized on the topic, her body continued to react to his nearness with a painful longing.

  “Do…” She swallowed and forced the words through her tight throat. “Do you believe him?”

  “I want to,” he admitted, startling her with his honesty. “But I can’t. Not after the things I’ve seen.” He drew away an inch, as though the memories reminded him once again why he couldn’t be close to her.

  “And…?” she prompted, part of her wishing he would back off so they could have a rational, serious discussion, part of her wishing he would move closer so they wouldn’t have to talk at all.

  “And at the same time, he could be telling the truth. If he is…” He eased away a fraction more, just enough to give her room to breathe the air that seemed to have thickened and warmed in her lungs. “If he is, then we’ve got another problem.”

  It hit her then, slamming through the sensual fog to leave her reeling. “If he’s telling the truth, then we don’t kn
ow who is after us, do we?”

  Logan shook his head. His eyes reflected a potent mix of regret and want. “No. We don’t.”

  “Who does Cage think it might be?”

  “He wants me to ask you the same thing.” As though realizing for the first time how close they’d gotten to each other—close enough to kiss, to love—he pulled away and strode to the opposite side of the room.

  Chilled by his withdrawal, by the cool counter at her back that was slowly warming with her body heat, Sam folded her arms across her chest. Shock rattled through her, followed by denial and a spark of anger. The concept was incredible. Unbelievable. “He thinks I’m the target?”

  Logan cursed. “Maybe. Possibly.” He scrubbed a hand through his short brown hair, leaving it standing up in spikes. “Probably not, but we can’t make assumptions. Not now.” He took a breath. “What about your exes?”

  Her stomach twisted, not because the memories were unpleasant, but because the whole situation sucked. This wasn’t about her. It was about him and his job.

  Wasn’t it?

  When he simply stood there, waiting for an answer, she cursed low and fisted her hands at her hips. “Are you asking for personal or professional reasons?”

  She hadn’t asked about his past relationships. For that matter, she hadn’t asked about any present ones, though in the hour they had waited for Logan’s return earlier that evening, Nancy had provided her with an unsolicited rundown of Logan’s life from birth to present day. According to her, he’d had two somewhat serious relationships in college and medical school, and nothing since. The lack might have made her worry that he was commitment-phobic if she didn’t already know.

  He didn’t avoid commitment for his own sake. He avoided it for the sake of the woman he might love. Right or wrong, he was stuck on the idea that it was unfair to ask her to love a man who might not come home from his next job, his next day at work.

  Hell, Sam wasn’t too keen on the idea, either. But that didn’t seem to have stopped her from caring. Hadn’t stopped her heart from breaking when she’d looked into that pickup-truck window and seen him motionless. Maybe not even breathing.

  Personal or professional? Her question hung on the air between them, unanswered, a living thing that made her wonder. Want. His eyes pulsed molten at the centers, as though he felt the same. A ball of need gathered in her stomach.

  And he turned away. “This isn’t about us—it never was. If it hadn’t been for those gunshots, we never would have spoken more than a passing word. We’d never be here.” His gesture encompassed the city, the penthouse, the space that enclosed them together. Alone.

  It shouldn’t have felt like a rejection, but damn it, it did. Sam sucked in a breath and schooled herself not to show the hurt. This wasn’t about sex, wasn’t about love. It was about figuring out who had shot at them, who had cut the brake lines on her truck.

  When she thought of it that way, it didn’t seem quite as far-fetched to wonder if she had been the target all along. Except—

  “What about the plastique in the refrigerator? That wasn’t aimed at me. Not at all.”

  “True.” He didn’t relax his pose. “But that happened after the other two incidents, and might have been designed to get me out of the way so I couldn’t interfere with the next attack on you.”

  Sam was chilled by the coolness of his tone, a stark contrast to the fire in his eyes, the air of tension that gathered around him. She shivered and held up a hand. “Okay. Point made. What do you want to know?”

  “Would any of your exes want to hurt you?” He didn’t look at her as he asked the question. A muscle pulsed at the corner of his jaw.

  “No. Never.” At his sidelong glance, she shrugged. “I pride myself on calm, rational breakups.” Lord knew she’d had enough practice. “The relationships ran their courses, that was all.”

  “My parents have been married nearly forty years.”

  The faint hint of censure reminded her of her father’s subtle disappointment. Don’t be like me, Sam, he’d said. Don’t love the ones who don’t want to stay.

  But then, like now, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from wanting the impossible, from wanting a strong, adventurous man who would stay in a tiny beachside town where nothing much ever happened.

  She met Logan’s eyes and held them. “I married Travis right out of vet school. At the time, we were a perfect match. Both of us wanted small practices someplace quiet.” She shrugged helplessly, a beat of sadness accompanying the memories of a sandy-haired student with wide shoulders and a go-getter’s attitude. “By our third year, he was on the fast track to research greatness and I was learning how to palpate cows.” That hadn’t been the only problem between them, but it was the easiest to summarize. “The divorce was simple. Amicable.”

  “Where is he now?” Logan’s expression was lighter now, as though he found no reason to suspect Travis.

  Or, her stubborn heart interjected, no reason to be jealous of him.

  Ignoring that as wishful thinking, she answered, “Cornell Vet. He and his wife are both instructors there. We keep in touch.” In casually friendly letters once or twice a year. Sometimes less.

  “And the other?”

  She tightened her arms across her breasts and glanced down at the rich marble of the kitchen floor. “Same story. We met, we clicked…then we unclicked when he got tired of Black Horse.” Of me. “We’ve stayed friends.”

  Distant friends, which made sense. If they’d had enough in common to stay good friends, they would have made their relationship work, wouldn’t they? She had simply chosen the wrong man. Again.

  Or so she told herself. It was easier and less painful than thinking maybe the lack was in her. To think that maybe she wasn’t capable of the deep, strong emotions that hurt enough to cry for.

  To kill for.

  When Logan didn’t respond, she shrugged and tried not to feel like a failure. “So the answer is no, neither of them would want to kill me.”

  His eyes bored into hers. “And your father? Would anyone want to use you to get to him?”

  The twisted logic of it brought a shiver, but Sam held still, trapped in the intensity of his eyes. “I…I don’t think so. You’ve seen Black Horse Beach—it’s not a hotbed of criminal activity.” At least it hadn’t been until Logan had arrived. “The sheriff’s job mostly involves riding herd on the tourists and dealing with DUIs. I don’t remember my father ever being involved in anything really bad. Not something that would be worth killing over, anyway.”

  She looked at the floor, thinking, What if he had been and didn’t tell me?

  What if he’d put someone in jail and the parole board set the criminal free?

  What if she’d been the target all along?

  The thought was chilling. Terrifying. It had been bad enough thinking she was in danger because of her association with Logan. But to think that he was in danger because of her? That she was being personally stalked by killers?

  The idea shouldn’t have made it worse. But it did.

  “Hey.” Logan’s voice startled her. She hadn’t heard him move, but he was suddenly close enough to touch. His eyes were warm amber, the darkness hidden at the back now. He lifted a hand and traced a finger down her cheek, leaving shivers behind. “You’re safe here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “And you? Who’s going to protect you?” Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, edged with nerves and his unsettling nearness. “When I saw you in the truck…” Her heart had stopped. Simply stopped. She bowed her head and found that her forehead rested comfortably on the slope of his chest. The position muffled her words when she said, “I thought you were dead.”

  “Hey,” he said again, and nudged a finger beneath her chin to tip her head up. “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me. It’s my job to worry about you.”

  No, it’s not, she wanted to say, I can take care of myself. But she said nothing, because she was trapped in his
eyes, in the heat and flash of them. In the warmth of his body pouring into hers and the inevitable knowledge that he was going to kiss her. That this was all wrong.

  And all right.

  Then he kissed her, and she couldn’t think anymore.

  Chapter Ten

  This was the king of all bad ideas, Logan knew, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from kissing her. Even as his brain fired every warning buzzer it owned, his body moved closer, his lips slid across hers, his tongue slipped between.

  He’d intended the kiss to be a quick flyby, an affirmation of his vow to protect her, no matter where the danger was coming from. He’d intended—

  Hell, who was he kidding? He just wanted to kiss her, bad idea or not. The more they’d stood in the kitchen together, voices saying one thing, bodies saying another, the more he’d wanted to kiss her.

  And oh, so much more, though the more couldn’t happen. Not tonight, not ever.

  So he contented himself with a kiss. Or at least that was how it started.

  The moment their lips touched, the moment she sighed into his mouth and returned his tongue’s caress, all his intentions exploded in an enormous boom of light and color and sound, all bouncing around inside his skull and resolving themselves into a single sensation.

  Heat.

  ONE MOMENT SAM WAS CHILLED with fear, with uncertainty, and the next there were no remnants of winter in her body. She was July, August, blazing sun and sweat all concentrated into one single point. His mouth. On hers.

  What am I doing? she thought, then realized she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Taking what she wanted, damn the consequences.

  She’d known it would come to this if they stayed together for any length of time. How could it not? The chemistry crackled between them like a live, greedy force. She couldn’t deny it.

  Didn’t want to.

  So when he angled his mouth across hers and sought entry with his tongue, she opened her mouth, opened her arms and yes, damn it, her heart, and let him in.

  One night, she told herself, she’d give herself one night to feel safe, to feel the flame.