“Let me guess, whenever she’s mad at you.”
“No, all the time. It’s embarrassing for a guy of my size to have the name of an angel.”
“When I first heard your name, I didn’t think it fit you any better than Isabelle fit me. But now I know better.” She turned in his arms, slipped her hands around his waist as easily as if she’d been doing it all her life. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of an angel’s name. But I’ll call you Gabe anyway.”
She went on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his jaw, then she laid her head on his chest. Funny, but now she seemed to be holding him, and he hadn’t even known that he needed it.
They’d begun this relationship based on attraction, but if he wasn’t very careful he’d end up in love with her, and Klein knew very well what would happen then.
He’d be the one to get hurt.
SHE WAS ACTUALLY EATING pizza after eight o’clock at night. Sacrilege in the bulimia handbook. But Belle couldn’t work up any angst over it at the moment. She was too happy.
The loneliness that had been her constant companion all her life faded when she was with Gabe. She forgot so many things when she looked into his eyes. She remembered what it felt like to touch him, to be a part of him and have him be a part of her. The wonder of him made all the problems and secrets in her life recede. Though she had no doubt they would thunder back to the surface soon enough.
“You were worried that sex would ruin our friendship?” He took a fifth slice of pizza and cocked a brow. “Does it feel ruined?”
With the scent of him still on her skin she had a hard time focusing on friendship. But as she considered his question, Belle realized she felt comfortable, at ease, at home for the first time since she’d left home—and it was because of Gabe.
“No,” she admitted. “In fact—”
“It’s enhanced,” he finished, sounding as shocked as she was. “I always thought I made a better friend than a lover.”
“Then, you must be quite a friend.”
He caught her meaning immediately. “Thank you.”
He tossed his crust into the box. It fell in the middle of the other four crusts, which were all that was left of a cheese-and-pepperoni. Belle had eaten three slices of her own—crusts and all.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that crusts give you curly hair?”
“What would I do with curly hair?”
She glanced at his crew cut and smirked. “Good point.”
“I could grow it out until I have a ponytail. Get an earring, a tattoo.”
“Oh, yeah, I can see it. Very you. I might have some pooka beads around here. Would you like to wear them?”
“Why don’t you? With nothing else.”
Her body heated. His slightest look, the merest touch of his hands, a foolish innuendo, and she wanted him again.
“What’s this?” He held up the script she’d been reading earlier.
“My script. Read it and weep. I wanted to.”
He skimmed the first page, his forehead twisting into a frown. The second page had him scowling. After the third, he slammed the script on the table and growled. “I don’t think so.”
“Weren’t you the one who told me Baywatch meets Mayberry? Well, you were right.”
“Bully for me. That’s a disgrace, Izzy. You’re better than that.”
Though his defense warmed her, still she had to ask. “How would you know?”
“What?” He glanced up from the script.
“That I’m better than that. Maybe that’s all I am. All I’ll ever be.”
“You believe all you’ve got to give the world is a few jiggles of those breasts and a choice view of your ass?”
“It’s worked pretty well so far.”
“I thought you wanted more.”
“I do. But how am I going to get it if all anyone sees is…?” She stabbed a finger at the script.
“By fighting for it. By proving you’re more, instead of letting them make you into less.”
“How?”
“By being Sheriff Janet Hayes the way you imagine her to be.”
Hope spread through Belle, driving out the lingering despair that had weighted her heart since she’d opened the package and read the first page of the script. “You think I can?”
“I know you can. But that script has got to go.”
“Well, there are some parts that could work, if they’d nip a little here and tuck a little there.”
His smile was like sunshine across a mountain peak covered with snow. “You gonna rewrite that script, Isabelle?”
“Rewrite?” She blinked. “Me?”
“You see anyone else?”
“But—but I can’t.”
“Who said?”
You don’t have to worry about spellin’ no more, Belle. The ABCs won’t matter once they get a gander at your face and body. Stick with your strengths, girl. And they ain’t in that pretty head of yours.
“I’m not a very good speller,” she admitted.
“Is that all? Neither is half the world.”
Belle wanted to do what Klein suggested, but she was afraid. Afraid she’d be no good. Afraid everyone would laugh at her—again. Afraid she’d just prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only thing she had to give was something that mattered not at all.
“When you can’t spell, you appear ignorant.”
“If you don’t even try, then you are.” He shoved the script to her side of the table. “Write down your ideas, then I’ll tell you what I think.”
She hesitated, and he reached across the table to cover her hand with his. She lifted her gaze from the damned script to his beloved face. “You can trust me, Izzy.”
As she stared into his eyes she had an odd feeling he was asking for more than a first look at her writing skills. She was tempted, not for the first time, to spill the whole sorry mess of her life. But she was afraid of that, too.
What man would want all that baggage? If he knew she was crazy as well as ignorant, ugly beneath the beautiful, defective in a way there was no fixing, would he ever touch her again?
She couldn’t take that chance. He made her feel too special, and she needed that right now. She needed him.
So she smiled and turned her hand around to clasp his. Then she gave him one thing, so he wouldn’t search for all the others.
“Got a pencil?”
KLEIN CLEANED THE KITCHEN while Izzy scribbled madly on the script from hell. When he’d read what they expected her to do on television he’d wanted to rip the thing into bits and then start them on fire. Could those morons possibly be unaware of the gem they had in her?
He finished putting everything away and sat on the couch. Isabelle continued to work as if alone in the room. She either didn’t notice, or didn’t mind, his staring. And why would she? Being stared at was part of her job. For some reason, that annoyed him more today than it had in the past. He didn’t want anyone staring at her but him, and that kind of thinking could get him into trouble.
“There.” She dropped the pencil and pushed back from the table. Her face held a note of wonder, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d done it.
“Finished?
“With the first scene.” She took the few steps between the table and the living area, then offered the script to him.
He took it and patted the couch at his side. She folded herself onto the seat, cuddling against him as though having done it for most of her life. His arm curled around her in the same way.
A flash from outside made Klein glance out the half-open window. Must be a storm coming, though he hadn’t heard of it on the news. Well, he didn’t plan to go out for several hours, anyway, and Clint had a doggie door at home. Klein began to read.
Several chuckles and quite a few outright guffaws later, he was done. He placed the papers in his lap and glanced at Isabelle. Apprehension darkened her brown eyes nearly to black.
“It’s good,” he said. “Very, very good.”
> “Really?”
“You heard me laugh. I wasn’t kidding. You’ve got a sense of comedic timing that the idiots who wrote this would sell their souls to have.”
Isabelle’s smile was joyous, but it faltered almost immediately. “Now what do I do?”
“Now you finish this script and you learn it this way, because when the director sees what you’ve done here, if he’s any kind of director he’ll know the show has to be performed as you’ve written it.”
She sighed. “Klein, I wish I had your confidence.”
So did he. “Lesson number five.” He held up one hand, fingers spread wide. “Confidence is pretending you know exactly what you’re doing, even when you don’t.”
“You’re saying you don’t know how to be a Tennessee sheriff?”
“I didn’t when I started.”
“You faked it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is the mayor aware of this?”
“The mayor couldn’t tell his butt from a hole in the ground.”
She laughed. “Can I quote you on that?”
“In the script. Not in the newspaper.”
She froze. Her eyes became dark pools of shock in the stark white of her face. “The newspaper,” she murmured. “Oh, no.”
“Relax, Izzy, I was just teasing.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She jumped up and began to pace in front of the couch. “We have to keep this a secret.”
“This? You mean the fact that you’re rewriting the script?”
“No.” She waved her hand, dismissing that. “You and me. Us. This.”
He frowned, confused and suddenly wary. Not that he’d wanted to announce their liaison to Pleasant Ridge—he wasn’t that dumb—but her agitation made him nervous. “Why?”
“Because if the tabloids get a hold of it—” She broke off and groaned. “It would be so embarrassing.”
Klein stiffened. He always expected the worst. That way he was rarely disappointed or surprised. So why was he both right now?
“I can imagine. How would it look for the beauty to belong to a beast?”
She glared at him. “That’s not what I meant. Although I could see them making up something just like that. The public would adore it. You wouldn’t believe the things they say, what they dig up, what they twist and turn until it’s not even close to the truth. I don’t want you to have to go through that, Gabe.”
He was having a hard time following the conversation. “You’re worried about me?”
“Of course.” She shrugged almost sheepishly. “And I admit I don’t need the attention, the scrutiny, the hassle right now. If I’m going to do this show my way, I’m going to have hassle enough without constant questions about my sex life.”
Sex life, not love life. Why did her choice of words bother him? He’d been the one to jump at the chance for a purely physical relationship. Even though, deep down, he still didn’t believe she wasn’t embarrassed to proclaim him as a lover to the world, nevertheless, he didn’t want cameras in his face, either.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to keep this a secret,” he allowed. “After all, I’m supposed to be teaching you. We’re required to be together.”
“Not in bed.”
“No, that’s just my requirement.”
A startled laugh erupted from her lips, and he was glad. She appeared so pale, so fragile, so worried, he’d half expected her to need holding up again.
She sat back down on the couch and threaded her fingers through his. He loved it when she did that.
“Well, we have been seen holding hands already. If that didn’t escalate into a torrid love affair on the Pleasant Ridge grapevine by now, we should be safe,” she said.
“True enough.”
And it obviously hadn’t escalated, or the mayor would have been whining instead of asking Klein to watch over her. Perhaps she’d been right about their being seen together enough that people began to ignore them.
“Speaking of safe…” She kissed his jaw, then frowned and glanced at the window behind him. “Was that lightning?”
“Mmm.” He pressed his mouth to the warm, scented skin where her shoulder met her neck. “Seems to go off every time I touch you.”
“Then, touch me some more, Sheriff. We could use the rain.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LIFE SETTLED into a pattern. Klein was with Isabelle day and night. They spent time at her apartment and his house. Together they remodeled his avocado bathroom. She painted ivy on his picket fence and planted more flowers.
Isabelle accompanied him on all his calls. She asked questions constantly, took copious notes and rewrote the script for the pilot in a week. It was brilliant, so Klein suggested she write an original script for the second episode. She took to the idea so fast that he could tell she was enjoying her new pastime nearly as much as he was enjoying his.
He’d had to return to an out-of-the-way drugstore twice in order to replenish their safety supply. Both times he’d felt someone watching him. But no one knew him there, and he hadn’t worn his uniform.
Klein shook his head. All the sneaking around was making him jumpy. Though necessary, creeping into Isabelle’s apartment after dark, or seeing her leave his house before dawn smacked of guilt and he didn’t like it. But he did like her, and he wasn’t willing to give up what they had.
Isabelle had been right about one thing. No one in Pleasant Ridge seemed to notice or care that the two of them were always together. In a town that thrived on gossip as its main source of entertainment, he should probably be insulted that nobody suspected anything was going on between the sheriff and the supermodel. But he wasn’t.
The only shadow over his yippy-skippy happiness was Isabelle’s refusal to share any part of herself other than her body. He tried to talk to her about her family, her past, her childhood. She turned the conversation to other things with the ease of a practiced politician.
But he had not found her weak and dizzy again. They ate meals together and she ate them. Once in a while he caught her frowning at her plate, pushing her food around or cutting it into itty-bitty pieces, but everyone had foibles.
She walked with him day in and day out, and she was so busy observing his job and writing her script that he hadn’t caught her running since the night they’d first been together. Maybe he’d been wrong about her, but he didn’t think so.
Klein turned his attention to the reports that covered incidents of the previous week. Thankfully nothing as serious as the feudal accident had occurred. Their days had been filled with the usual.
Joey Farquardt put a hole in Serafina’s garbage can with a slingshot. Slingshot confiscated.
Jesse Wright was late to work one morning and tried to make up time by driving his truck down Longstreet Avenue at fifty miles an hour. He argued that it was still dark out and no one was there to see—except Klein. Speeding ticket issued.
T.B.’s night in the open, and his subsequent rescue, did little to improve his disposition. The new sailor suit Miss Dubray whipped up on her Singer hadn’t helped. T.B. attacked the pants of a tourist from Knoxville who had driven in to see the Shiloh exhibit. Pants paid for by Miss Dubray, disturbing the peace citation issued to the Chihuahua.
Of course, there were other more serious issues. Runaway teen picked up hitchhiking on Highway B. Given lecture on the evils of the world and taken directly back home. A bag of marijuana discovered in a middle school locker. Sheesh—middle school! Drugs traced to the kid’s pot-head parents. Arrest made; Social Services notified.
Then there was yesterday’s domestic disturbance at the Trumpens’. Such disturbances were every cop’s worst nightmare, and Klein refused to have Isabelle anywhere near something so volatile. So she hadn’t seen him slam Mr. Trumpen against the wall a few times—just until the man promised that the missus would no longer run into any doors. Because if she did there’d be another, less pleasant, visit from the sheriff.
God, Klein loved his job.
Now Klein glanced at Isabelle, who had commandeered Virgil’s desk and was scribbling again. Had he dreamed of her, too? No, he’d never dared to dream of a woman who could make him forget all his insecurities, a woman who could make him feel beautiful whenever she touched him or even looked at him. He wanted to cross the room and kiss her neck until she melted into his arms. But that was a job for tonight.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She glanced up, eyes unfocused, expression vague. She got like that when she was writing, although today she was more distracted than usual. This morning her phone had rung before the sun was up, and even though he’d been half asleep, he’d heard her whispering to whomever had called. But when he’d asked who it was, she’d shaken her head and refused to answer, which only reminded Klein that she still held parts of her life secret from him. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“I was working on a scene with T.B. and Clint,” she answered. “You think we could use them in the show?”
He snorted. “T.B. will hurt someone. You’d better get a stand-in.”
“And Clint?”
He shrugged. “You can try, but he might fall asleep.”
She laughed and returned to her work.
The door of the station opened. Chai stepped in, accompanied by a man near Klein’s age, with the same salt-and-pepper hair, although his was pulled into a ponytail and covered by a beret. In Klein’s experience hats on men with ponytails usually indicated male pattern baldness.
Klein recognized the thought for what it was—envy. Not that he wanted a ponytail or a beret, but the guy was another pretty face. Was the whole world full of them?
“Sheriff,” Chai began. “This is—”
“Isabelle, my angel!”
The man breezed past Chai. Klein would have enjoyed the expression on the mayor’s face if the ponytail man, who was kissing Isabelle on the mouth and sliding his hands around her waist, hadn’t distracted him.
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