“Give me until Monday, Mr. Grimsley, and I’ll see what I can do. Otherwise, you’re welcome to take the safe back with you.”
“No. That wouldn’t be a good idea. I’ll leave it.”
“Can I drop you somewhere?” Sarah asked in an attempt to coax him out the door.
“No thanks.” He peered once more out the window, then quickly slipped out. By the time Sarah had pulled the blinds, turned off the lights, and locked up, he was gone. She didn’t know how he could have disappeared so quickly. She didn’t even know how to reach him.
Sarah shook her head. There were a lot of strange people in the world, and locksmiths ran into many of them. But Miss Lois’s great-nephew? Sarah found it odd that she’d never heard him mentioned before. Older people often rattled off their family history at the drop of a hat.
But apparently he’d checked with City Hall for permission to enter the house. They wouldn’t have let him inside if he wasn’t who he said he was. Anyway, if Paul had sent him over, he had to be all right.
It was getting late. She was tired and dirty. No wonder the old man had asked if there was someone else around. If she’d come into the shop she wouldn’t believe that she was a locksmith either. As she drove away, Sarah tried to concentrate on the safe in the back. She couldn’t. All she could think about was a stern, lean figure who loped in measured strides.
When she reached the barn Sarah backed the van directly below the hayloft. She ran upstairs, opened the second-floor doors, and lowered the old iron grate she and her father had fashioned into a dumbwaiter for lifting equipment. Later, when Sarah had turned the loft into her living quarters, she’d been grateful for the setup. With it, she’d been able to pull building supplies and furniture up to the second floor.
With a little effort she rolled the small safe out of the van and onto the grate. By using a system of pulleys she raised the grate up to the hayloft doors, then ran back upstairs and pulled it, and the safe, inside.
She’d have a look at the safe as soon as she was relaxed enough to concentrate. First she drank a glass of iced tea. Several minutes later, she made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and poured herself a glass of milk. Nothing satisfied her.
By midnight she’d given up on the safe and was pacing the floor while carrying on a debate with herself. Asa Canyon might be accustomed to being by himself, but he didn’t like it. He’d lost someone he cared about and she knew how that felt. And he ought not to be alone now.
Sarah reached into her closet and pulled out the first thing she touched, a deep rose sundress with slim ribbon straps. She stepped into a pair of white sandals and dashed down the stairs. Besides, she couldn’t be mistaken about the way he’d responded to her kiss.
No, Asa Canyon shouldn’t be alone. And he wouldn’t be, if Sarah could help it. A kiss was a promise, and if she was right, Asa would welcome her. If she was wrong, she’d turn around and come home and nobody would know but her.
Four
Across the lake the moon hung low over the stand of loblolly pines. Asa studied the golden reflection on the water and decided that it looked like a spaceship, its exhaust wavering outward where the water rippled against the shore. The spaceship made him think of Sarah.
Everything made him think of Sarah.
He stood in the doorway listening to the silence, restless, unable to settle down, waiting for something he couldn’t explain.
A layer of fog began to roll in over the surface of the water as the night air cooled. A frog’s voice pierced the air exploding like the urgent siren of an emergency vehicle on a rescue mission.
The phone rang. It was Jeanie.
Apologetic, anxious, at the same time undeniably happy, she wanted Asa to know that she and Mike were married. They were truly in love, perfect together. Mike loved to travel and he could go with her, wherever her assignments led her. She hadn’t known what Mike had done until they were on the plane. She hoped that Asa wouldn’t hate her for loving Mike.
“I won’t, not if you really love him,” Asa said. “But you tell that smart aleck you ran off with that I’m planning his torture. He can just get ready.”
Mike came on the phone. “I wouldn’t have done it, old buddy, if you’d understood. But you weren’t about to, and we didn’t have time for you to come around, so I had no choice.”
In the end Asa gave them his blessings. He wondered, after the connection had been broken, if he would have been so willing to wish them well if it weren’t for Sarah.
When he answered the knock on the door a moment later and found her standing there, he wasn’t sure whether she was real or he was hallucinating.
Then she threw her arms around his neck and for a moment he gave in to the feeling of contentment she brought with her. Until he realized that what she was giving was more than comfort, and that he had no right to it.
“You and the mayor were both wrong,” he said tightly. “Running doesn’t work, and cold showers only give me goose bumps.”
“I know,” she responded softly. “Neither does peanut better and jelly. That’s why I came back.”
“Maybe we’d better talk about this.”
“Must we? I’d rather you kiss me.”
“Sarah, I don’t think what you’re asking for is that simple. Let me put on my pants and we’ll go for a walk.”
“Put on your pants?”
Asa turned back into the dark cabin.
Sarah followed.
He stepped into a room off the small living area and turned on the light. Through the crack in the door Sarah could see him clearly. Tonight his underwear was blue. He stepped into a pair of faded worn jeans and picked up a pair of sneakers.
She blushed and walked over to the window overlooking the lake. Waiting for him to dress, she sat on the sill in the moonlight.
“Deputy Canyon?”
He tied the last shoelace and slid his arms into the sleeves of a knit shirt, pulling it over his head as he joined her. “I think we’re past Deputy Canyon and Ms. Wilson, Sarah. My name is Asa.”
She looked up at him, her face showing a spark of humor. “All right, Asa. I just wanted to point out that nobody is watching now. This isn’t in the line of duty.”
“It isn’t?”
“It isn’t.” She kissed him.
He knew he shouldn’t let it happen. Last night’s first kiss had been a necessary ploy. The second, an accident.
He groaned.
This kiss was a crazy wonderful mistake and he gave in to it with full cooperation and little thought of where it might lead. He had a sudden vision of a beach, a hot summer night, and two lovers, linked together on the sand by some secluded lagoon. The sound of a water creature breaking the surface and falling back into the darkness gave way to the call of a night bird in the distance. It all seemed part of the moment, tied with the touch and feel of the woman in his arms.
It was the blowing of a car horn that finally broke through his rapture and interrupted their embrace. Asa walked out onto the porch, giving silent thanks to Officer Paul Martin, who was driving up behind Sarah’s van. Behind Paul was Asa’s silver truck, being driven by another blue-uniformed officer.
“Believe it or not,” Paul called out, “we found your truck parked in the mayor’s space at City Hall. There was a pile of clothes on the seat and a note that said the keys and your gun were under the mat and would we please deliver them to you. So, here we are.”
“City Hall.” Asa scowled. “That figures. Mike wouldn’t dare leave Silver Girl some place where she would be stolen. Thanks, Martin. I owe you one.”
The driver of the truck pulled into the space at the corner of the house, slid out, and climbed into the patrol car. Without a comment on the late hour, or Sarah’s presence, Paul gave a thumbs-up salute and drove away.
Asa looked down at Sarah and realized that her very presence here linked them together, whether or not he wanted it. She’d rescued him, handed over the keys to her van, and made him a part of her softball
team, all of which tied them to each other. He worried that even though Smyrna hugged the perimeter of Atlanta, it was still a small town at heart. Members of the inner circle, those whose parents and grandparents had been born here, were still protective of their own. And Sarah was one of theirs.
He caught her hand. “Let’s go for a walk before I do something to get myself arrested. Deputies aren’t immune from the wrath of a man who believes he’s protecting a woman.”
“Who? Paul Martin?” Sarah asked, putting her arm around Asa’s waist as they walked across the yard. “He’s just a friend.”
“I was thinking more about the mayor.” They wandered over to the lake and followed a well-worn path around the moonlit water.
“Jake Dalton is a friend, too.”
“I don’t think that’s his choice.”
“How old are you, Asa?”
“I’m thirty-five, old enough to know better than to let you make yourself a part of my life under false pretenses.”
“Good. I like a man who knows what he’s doing, especially when what he’s doing feels so good.”
“Oh, lady,” he said under his breath, “I think the deputy sheriff is in big trouble.”
Asa didn’t know how to respond to Sarah’s honesty. She thought he needed her and she came. He knew that he could invite her inside the cabin and she wouldn’t hesitate, but that would take them one step further in a direction that he wasn’t sure he was ready to go.
Asa removed her arm from his waist and held her hand, his long fingers loosely threaded through her shorter ones.
“Sarah, Jeanie called tonight, before you came. I gave her and Mike my blessings.”
“I’m glad.”
Asa stopped and turned to study Sarah in the moonlight.
“Why did you really come here tonight?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t want you to be alone.”
He gave a dry laugh. “You didn’t have to bother. I’m an expert at being alone. I ought to be, I’ve had a lot of experience with it.”
“I don’t understand, Asa.” She caught his arm. “Tell me why you’re alone.”
“All right,” he finally said. “I was brought up in an orphanage, a real orphanage, Sarah. I don’t even know who my parents were. I was the kid everybody took home and returned. As soon as I graduated from high school I joined the Marines. From then on, it was me who was leaving.”
“You’ve never had anybody?”
“I guess Jeanie is the only family I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, Asa, I’m so sorry they didn’t love you. You must have been very strong to survive.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. I wasn’t a nice child. But one thing I finally learned is that a man is responsible for making himself happy. He can’t depend on anyone else. People are temporary. They can be replaced.”
Asa was talking to Sarah, but he was also talking to himself, working through the problem, just as he always did until he had an answer that he could deal with.
People are temporary? Sarah couldn’t even begin to argue with his calm acceptance of loss.
“Believe me, Sarah, for a time, Jeanie thought that she wanted the security I offered. She needed to feel wanted, to have someone care about her. Now, she has Mike. And that’s good.”
“You truly aren’t grieving?”
“I’m not grieving.”
With her free hand Sarah reached up and touched Asa’s face. “If you don’t want me here, I’d better go. I don’t know how to be temporary.”
Asa looked down at her stricken expression. He was rejecting what she was offering, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.
“Yes, you’d better, Sarah. For if you stay I’ll only mess up your life.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You should. I’m not kind and giving. And I don’t know how to accept your compassion.”
“That’s not true, Asa. You care about people. That makes you special in my book.”
“Not people. Just Jeanie and she was a responsibility, like my job. Being with you isn’t the same.”
“It isn’t? I’m glad.”
He drew Sarah’s hand to his mouth, where he planted a quick kiss on her palm, then let go.
“Ah hell, Sarah, go home while I can still let you go. This can’t work. I’d make you miserable.”
“Why don’t you let me decide?”
“I’m compulsively neat,” he went on, as if he was trying to convince himself as well as Sarah. “My bathroom doesn’t have any extra toothbrushes in the cabinet because I don’t like people in my house. My truck sits too high off the ground for a lady to climb in and out of because I don’t welcome a woman’s company. In other words, I’m a man who has a plan for every part of his life, and you’re a lady—”
“Without one,” she finished. “Maybe you’re right. But I think you may be wrong about what a man has to do to be happy. Maybe there are times when it’s better to forget all your plans and fly blind into the sun.”
She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes in the darkness. But she could feel the tension in his touch. He should have loosened his grip and stepped back if he wanted her to believe that he was pulling away. But he didn’t. Instead there was an almost imperceptible movement that brought him even closer.
Sarah’s heart was thudding in her chest. Her knees felt shaky.
“I’m sorry, Asa. I don’t seem to be very smart about this. I feel wicked for even thinking it. I guess I’m not a truly noble person. I’m not even being honest about why I’m here. The real reason I came”—her voice dropped into a throaty whisper—“is because I think that I want you.”
“That’s crazy,” he said.
“I know, but it’s true.”
In the darkness, Sarah felt the erratic rhythm of her heartbeat. She could hear Asa’s breathing as his chest expanded and compressed. He wasn’t any more controlled than she.
A long moment passed before he spoke. “Are you sure you want to take a chance on getting involved with a man like me?”
Sarah closed her eyes for a moment and tried to think logically about her reply. But she couldn’t. She kept remembering her father’s belief that a person had only one shot at the brass ring and he had to go for it, or forever regret the loss. Her father never considered not playing ball, even though his playing hastened his death. The only thing he ever talked about was the great joy his life had brought to him.
There was no logic to her feelings for Asa Canyon, or to her actions. All she was certain of was that Asa refused to let himself hold her when his need to do so was as great as hers.
“Do I want to get involved with you? I already am,” she said, and was rewarded with a groan of desperation as his arms locked around her. Their lips met and fused. His kiss was wild and hard as he nibbled his way across her face, pulling on her lips, her cheeks, her ears, as if she were an oasis offering water to a man dying of thirst. There was nothing gentle about him, or about his touch.
There was nothing tentative about her offering herself to him. She tilted her head to reach his mouth and curved her body to give him the freedom to reach her.
The night went quiet. Even the frog across the lake had fallen silent—until a response came from another web-footed creature. Their baroque mating call startled Asa, drawing him back to the present. He slowly brought his kisses to a stop.
Dazed, Sarah pulled back and stared at Asa.
“My, my,” she whispered. “When you do something, you go all out, don’t you?”
“I tried to tell you, Sarah. In another minute I’d have had you on the ground and you know what I would have wanted.”
“I think I do,” she said softly. “But I’m not sure that I’m ready for that—not yet.”
“I’m damn sure you’re not,” he said, his voice sharp with barely controlled fury. “That’s why you’re going to get into Henry and go home now!”
“All right, if that’s what you want.”
“You
know damn well that’s not what I want. But what I’ve already taken is all I’m going to get.”
Asa put his hand on her shoulder and directed her back toward the cabin. He put Sarah in the van and slammed the door.
“Go home, Sarah. Call me when you get there.”
“I don’t have your number,” she managed to say, forcing the words past the lump that had almost closed off her throat.
“I’ll get it.”
From the wallet he found under the seat in his truck, he extracted a business card, and with a pen, jotted his private number on the back. When he handed it to Sarah he made certain that their hands didn’t touch.
“Call me,” he directed, “as soon as you get there, so I won’t worry.”
“Thank you, Asa. I like thinking that you would worry about me.”
She called twenty minutes later. When he heard her voice he didn’t trust himself to say more than “Fine.”
Sarah didn’t try to force the conversation. For now, that was enough.
Asa Canyon raised his arm, took aim, and pulled the trigger four times. The result was one shot in the heart of the cardboard bank robber, two in his arm, and one—who knew where. He’d been firing his gun for the better part of an hour, a task that he normally found soothing. The weapons range usually put things in proper perspective for him. Today he found his mind wandering. Today he was drawing a crowd of onlookers, not from his sharpshooting, but from his misses.
With a groan he tore the goggles and ear protectors from his face and left the sound-proof room. He might as well quit. He was only wasting bullets.
He’d spent Sunday morning running around the lake and reading the newspaper, and the afternoon catching up on his paperwork. The firing range had killed another hour. A quick supper at Speedy’s Grill had carried him to nine o’clock. So far he’d managed to put Sarah Wilson and the ball tournament out of his mind.
As he left the building he came to a stop, made a circle, and went back inside to the lockup room where Clarence was grumbling louder than usual as he filled out a form.
“Clarence?”
“Yeah, man, what you need? If it’s a report, or a file, forget it. I won’t be caught up here before Christmas and it ain’t even Halloween.”
Silver Bracelets: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance Page 6
