Sarah picked up two cups of lemonade and managed to avoid drawn out conversations with festival-goers as she and Asa sipped the cool drinks and made their way through the crowd.
The city square was filled with people: Craftsmen with their wares and locals who enjoyed the food and activities. Asa couldn’t imagine where the two of them were heading until Sarah dropped their cups in a trash can, took his hand, and led him across the street.
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t ask questions. Just follow me.”
He did.
They ducked into an alley behind the row of buildings on the north side of the square. When they reached the last building Sarah fumbled with a panel beside a small side entrance. When the door swung open she jerked Asa inside and closed it behind them. The room was cool and totally dark.
“Where exactly are we?” he asked.
“We’re on the stage of the old Strand Theater, behind the curtain.”
“A movie theater?”
“Well, it isn’t a movie house anymore. It’s being used as a theater.”
Asa whistled. She’d done it again, caught him off guard. “How’d we get in? Wasn’t it locked?”
“Yes, but I put the lock in and I know the combination. The owner left my code in the alarm, in case I ever had to make a service call.”
“Then we’re not trespassing?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. Come on.” She took his hand and pulled him forward. Trying to see was impossible and after slamming into two pieces of equipment, Sarah finally pulled his arms around her so that they were curled together like two spoons as they walked.
“Now stay with me,” she said.
“Are you sure we’re alone here?” Asa asked, concerned about the growing evidence of his reaction to her nearness.
“Why, Deputy, you want to fool around?”
Sarah twisted around in his arms and pulled his face down to meet hers. “Do I embarrass you, Asa?”
“No! Yes! Hell, I don’t know what you do to me. I just know that I’ve broken into a building and I’m standing here in the dark making out with a woman who doesn’t have any idea what she’s inviting!”
“I think I know,” she said in a voice that was throaty with desire. “I’m inviting you to kiss me.”
“As I recall, you were taking me someplace to get cooled off.”
“Not true. I asked you if you were hot and you agreed. I figured that I’d never get a better shot at taking advantage of you.”
He groaned. She was right. He wanted badly to kiss her. Just one quick intense little kiss wasn’t going to make things any worse than they already were.
“Asa?”
“I like the way you say my name, Sarah. I like the way you smell, the way you feel.” He pressed a hand against the small of her back. He planted the other on her bare skin just below the swell of her breasts.
“Asa,” she whispered, and rose up on her toes.
Then he covered her mouth with his in a hard, possessive kiss, parting her lips, plunging his tongue deep inside as he pulled her even closer. She copied his movements, shifting her body so that every part of them could touch. He was murmuring her name now as his fingers slid beneath her top and claimed her breasts.
She could have cried out with joy if he hadn’t been stealing her breath with his mouth. There was something warm and wonderful exploding inside her, something that she would have stopped to consider except she was too busy feeling pleasure.
Asa was lost. From the moment he took her into his arms he was overwhelmed with emotion. Her scent filled his nostrils. Her body filled his hands. The joy of being with her erased all sense of caution and he gave into his desire. As he bent over her, sliding his mouth down her neck and across her breasts his arms came in contact with something metallic. It moved and they fell forward, just as the curtains slid open and the stage lights came on, flooding them with brightness.
Asa stood up, lifting Sarah. “Damn! I can’t see a thing. It’s too bright.”
“Oh, Asa,” Sarah was whispering. “I never knew kissing could be so … illuminating.”
“Damn!” Asa swore again. “What kind of cooling-off place is this?” He was beginning to adjust to the lights. At the other end of the building, where he’d expected to see a partition between the seats and the lobby, was a plate glass window. They were in full view of the entire square.
“Cooling off?” Sarah’s innocent quip was lost on Asa as he observed the applause of the onlookers on the sidewalk.
“Damn! Let’s get out of here!” Asa whirled around and threw the light switch. “I hope you know how to relock this door.”
“It locks automatically.”
“Fine.” There was no more conversation as he dragged Sarah behind the buildings to his truck. He helped her in, climbed in beside her, and slammed the door.
“What is there about you and lights?” he asked, knowing that he was bellowing and knowing that he couldn’t stop himself. “Don’t you ever stop to think what your actions can lead to?”
“I thought it was nice. I like kissing you. I like touching you. I like you touching me. But I can understand I embarrass you. You aren’t very public with your feelings. I keep forgetting and I’m sorry about that, but I won’t apologize for the way I feel.”
Asa took a deep breath.
“It isn’t you, Sarah. It’s me. I’ve been alone so long that I don’t know how to act with a woman.”
“I think you do very well.”
“I think I’d better take you home.”
“Aren’t we going to stay for the dance?”
Dance? Hold Sarah in his arms with the world watching? Not today! Not tomorrow! Not ever! Asa gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying desperately to formulate an answer. He failed. Instead, he found himself turning toward Sarah, leaning forward, taking her into his arms. What he might have done he’d never know for at that moment the shortwave radio in his truck crackled on.
“Are you there, Deputy? We have a problem.”
Asa pulled away and picked up the speaker. “Canyon here. What do you have?”
“We’ve got a make on our body. You’d better come in.”
“Damn!” This time it was Sarah who cursed and drew back in frustration.
Six
Asa kept the engine running when he pulled up to the fence outside her barn. Sarah knew that he was impatient to get to his office but she couldn’t resist asking, “Will you come by later?”
“I don’t know. I have a job to do. I can’t—” He stopped, softened his voice and added, “If I don’t come, I’ll try to call you.”
That was more than she’d expected. Sarah slid out, started to the barn, stopped and turned back.
“I’ll be here, Asa. People aren’t always temporary.”
Her words played through his mind as he drove back to the station. People aren’t always temporary. He wanted to believe her, but he didn’t dare.
Sarah Wilson was the kindest, most caring person in the world, but other caring people had abandoned him, and she would be no exception.
Jeanie had left. This was the first time he’d allowed himself to admit that Jeanie’s running away with Mike hurt. In spite of all his resolve, Jeanie had become family. And for her to elope without talking it over with him was a blow.
Now there was Sarah. He didn’t know why he’d let things with Sarah go so far. Except that he cared for her. She made him feel wanted in a way that wasn’t just sexual. And no matter how hard he tried not to, he admitted that he wanted to be wanted.
Still, Sarah was temporary. Sooner or later she’d grow tired of him and she’d move on to the next poor lost soul. Rescuing people seemed to be her thing. As long as he kept reminding himself of that it wouldn’t hurt when she left. He wouldn’t let it. He wouldn’t feel it.
Yes, you will, a little voice whispered. But maybe this time, the caring is worth the pain.
After Asa left, Sarah tried some more combinations
on the safe, all without success. Then she recalled that her father had had several antique books on locks. She decided to make a couple of service calls while Asa was working and afterward do some research on the safe. That way she’d be here if Asa called. Recording a message on her answering machine that told her current plans, she changed clothes and started on her rounds.
It was late afternoon when she finished the last call and stopped by the shop to pick up a new pair of handcuffs and keys. She intended to offer them to Asa as replacement for the ones she’d destroyed. On the way home she dropped by the market for steaks and salad greens, which would be, she hoped, her first meal for Deputy Canyon. As she turned down the drive she stopped and ran inside the house where her mother was peeling apples from the trees Sarah and Big Jim had planted.
“Sarah, come in. How nice to see you. Aren’t the apples nice?”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence before Sarah’s mother asked, “Is there something wrong, Sarah?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. I came to borrow some of Pop’s antique reference books. But if you have time, I think I’d like to talk about … about …”
“He’s something to talk about all right,” her mother said.
“He?” Sarah started to protest, looked at her mother and changed her mind. “Yes, I think he is.”
“He seems to be a very private man. But when he came by to check my security system, I asked him what his intentions were toward you, and he confessed. Besides, I think he really wanted to talk.”
“You asked him what his intentions were?” Sarah groaned. “Mother, I don’t believe you.”
“Well, your father isn’t here. I felt it was my duty.”
“What makes you think Asa wanted to talk?”
“He seemed so concerned about security. He really checked out the house. When he got to your old room, he must have asked a hundred questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like why you moved into the barn, and why you weren’t married.”
“Oh. What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That you moved out there because you and your father had so many happy times there, and that you never married because you were afraid to let yourself care for somebody else who might leave you. I think he understood that answer.”
“But that’s not true. I left the house so that you and Robert would be more comfortable. No man wants to come into a marriage with an adult daughter living in the house. As for Pop, he told me over and over that I should find myself somebody to love. I just … haven’t.”
“That’s because you never let anybody get beyond the friendship stage, do you? Look at Paul Martin and Jake Dalton. Both men care for you but you never seem to notice. Why this one?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah answered her mother honestly. “He just seems to be in so much pain.”
“Like your father? Oh, Sarah, if you love a man, love him for the right reasons, not because he’s in need of comfort.”
“I know. That’s why I’m so confused. Mother, were you … were you happy with Pop?”
“Not always. But”—she stared out into space—“I was never unhappy. Confused is a word that might fit my feelings too. He was larger than life, and I could never claim him all for myself. A part of him was mine, but the rest belonged to everyone who needed something from him.”
“But didn’t that make you crazy?”
“For a while, but I came to understand that I was very lucky that there was a part for me. You’re just like your father, Sarah. And I always worried that you wouldn’t find a man who would share you. I’m not worried anymore. Asa is strong enough. He doesn’t know how to love yet, so you’ll just have to teach him.”
“Did Pop teach you?”
“We taught each other.”
“But I always thought that you disapproved of him.”
“I was angry that he was going to die when I thought he might have been able to live longer if he’d been more careful. I didn’t want him to go on playing baseball. The doctors said it was too much of a strain on his body. I threatened to leave him if he didn’t quit.”
Sarah gave a quiet gasp. Her mother leave her father? She’d known that their marriage hadn’t always been happy, but she couldn’t imagine either of them not being married to each other.
“I begged him to get a regular job,” her mother went on, “like my friends’ husbands. I thought if things were normal, he’d be normal. He tried it for one winter, and it almost killed him. Oh, he was stronger physically, but he was not the same man.
“Finally I understood what I was doing to him. My fear was making us both unhappy so I sent him off to spring training the next year. I never tried to change him again.”
Alice took a deep breath and picked up another apple. “I’m making apples pies, darling. Would you like one for Deputy Canyon?”
Sarah felt dazed. Her mother rarely talked about personal thoughts. She always kept everything to herself. Yet in the last five minutes she’d divulged more about her pain and regrets than she’d ever done before. She’d done it to make Sarah see that differences didn’t always destroy, not if two people loved each other.
“I’d love a pie,” Sarah finally said, “as long as it has a ‘Made by Alice’ label on it.”
“Made by Alice? What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t want Asa to get the idea that I can cook. He knows about my coffee. This pie would blow my image.”
“Oh, he won’t think that. I already told him you can’t cook. I told him that you get the hiccups when you’re excited and that you’re silly about Christmas, too.”
“You didn’t.”
“And you know what I learned? The man has never put up a Christmas tree. I told him not to worry. You always cut your own and put it up the day after Thanksgiving. So you’d better start looking for one that’s huge. I think Deputy Canyon needs a tree big enough to make up for all the ones he’s missed.”
The potatoes were in the microwave ready for baking. The steaks were in the oven broiler. The salad was in the refrigerator. Sarah stirred sugar into the pitcher of tea she’d just made and sat down to read about old safes in the reference books and watch the news while she waited.
Channel Eight had a brief story on the drowning of an unidentified elderly man whose body had been found floating in the river by the park the night before. They were not releasing his name until next of kin had been notified. Foul play was suspected. It was believed that the man had been one of the vagrants who lived under an overpass nearby.
Sarah was about to change the channel when the camera caught Asa in its pan across the activity along the river bank. He was grim-faced and impatient, pushing past the reporter without acknowledging the television personality’s attempt to question him.
“That was Deputy Sheriff Asa Canyon,” the reporter said. “He’s the same deputy who apprehended the two men who robbed a drive-in restaurant three weeks ago. Deputy Canyon, an ex-Marine, came to Cobb County from Stevens Securities, where he served as project director for the last five years.”
A Marine was always the first on the scene of any confrontation, Sarah mused. He was loyal, dependable, and took care of business. Something like a boy scout, she thought, smiling. She remembered what her mother had said about Christmas trees and wondered if Asa liked gingerbread men.
A drop of perspiration ran down her forehead. Sarah turned the air conditioning up a notch. Gingerbread men. Christmas trees. It was August and the mercury in the thermometer outside the window was still clinging to 90 degrees. Well, she could dream about fall. She could close her eyes and count to ten, too, if she thought it would make her phone ring.
“It didn’t.
“He wasn’t just a vagrant,” the sheriff said. “Name was Lincoln Grimsley. Seems like our boy just got himself released from a federal pen. Been spending the last fifteen years there, off and on.”
Asa looked at the report and scowled. “What for?”
“Larceny. At one time or another, he’s tried most everything. According to his rap sheet, he married six women and took all their life savings, swindled at least four others of various amounts of money, and turned to mail fraud. Mostly he was just a lousy con man. Kept getting caught. Seems he was a talker. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“So what’s he doing here?”
“That’s the surprise. He was a distant relative of the Grimsley family.”
The sheriff struck a big wooden kitchen match and lit the filter-tipped cigarette in his mouth. Then he opened a manila envelope and spread the contents across the desk top.
Asa picked up the leather change purse held together with cords of matching rawhide. The purse, waterlogged and still damp, held three dollar bills and a handful of change.
Using the matchstick, the sheriff shoved a scrap of newspaper toward Asa. He read the clipping, which was about the new Smyrna Village and the refurbishing of the old Grimsley House and the adjacent one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old Bank of Smyrna building.
“He knew about the project. Then as soon as he got out of prison he came straight here. Why?” the sheriff asked.
“Now there’s the two-dollar question. I’m going to run over to Smyrna City Hall and ask a few questions.”
“Go ahead, but remember, the less anybody knows about this, the better. We don’t want everyone horning in. Too many cooks spoil the soup, or whatever that old saying is.”
“Right, Chief.” Asa gave his boss a nod and left the office.
He glanced at his watch as he got into his truck. He’d told Sarah he’d call her. He didn’t know why he’d done that. It put a routine in their relationship, and he hadn’t intended to establish one. Taking her to the Cotton Patch Days Festival was a mistake, too. He’d known it at the time. If he hadn’t, seeing her in that short skirt and brief top should have made it very clear.
Having her come with him had been arranged without Asa’s knowing. Something had been said about his playing on Sarah’s softball team. The sheriff had complimented Asa on his zeroing in on the nicest girl in the county. And suddenly Asa was agreeing to ask Sarah to help out in the booth.
Silver Bracelets: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance Page 9
