WHEN I SEE YOUR FACE

by Laurie Paige

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

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  Chapter 1

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  Shannon Bannock waved at the children on the gaily decorated float, part of the parade assembling in the parking lot diagonally across from her. Standing at the intersection, she directed traffic away from the main street of Wind River, Wyoming, where the Parade of Lights festival took place each year on the Sunday before Christmas.

  As a detective for the combined police-sheriff offices of the town and county, she normally handled domestic matters for the department, but at this hectic time of the year, every officer filled in where needed.

  Noting a group of kids and an adult approaching the corner, she quickly set out the wooden road barriers, then led the children and their caretaker across the street to a good spot to view the parade.

  "Merry Christmas," she called to an old school chum's eight-year-old daughter as the festivities began. For a second she marveled at that fact – that one of her best friends from high school had a child that age. Next year would be the tenth reunion of the class. Amazing.

  Of her old pals, she was the only one not married. Friends said she shepherded everyone else into family units but was afraid to try matrimony herself. That wasn't true at all. She just didn't wear her heart on her sleeve. In actual fact, she'd met someone she thought was quite nice, a new attorney in town—

  "Yo, lady cop," a masculine baritone called.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she gazed into light blue eyes and a face that – according to Marilee at the hair and nail shop – should have graced a monument as an example to all women of true male beauty. Rory Daniels, local heartthrob.

  He was a respected veterinarian and someone she'd known all her life. He was five or six years older than she was, though, and, being an upperclassman, hadn't been part of her particular group of friends. Dressed in a down jacket that emphasized the color of his eyes, his hair blowing attractively across his forehead, she had to admit he was the best-looking man in the county.

  The fact that he irritated her no end didn't lessen the impact. They had clashed over county land use, a street-improvement project and the use of woman police officers. He thought they should stay off the street and in the office. She thought women weren't utilized to their full potential.

  In her opinion, he was opinionated and arrogant … in a charming way. She grinned at the thought. He was certainly a man to turn a woman's head. Some women, she corrected, not her. She had her life planned, and it didn't include a stop at Heartbreak Hotel because of a man.

  "Any possibility I can get through?" he asked.

  Seeing that the parade was at last getting underway, she shook her head. "Sorry. Unless it's an emergency?"

  He stepped down from the pickup and stood beside her. "Not really. A mare being a bit slow about foaling. The family called and asked me to stop by."

  "The parade will be over in twenty minutes," she told him. "Or you can drive down to the overpass on the highway."

  "I'll wait."

  She shrugged as he stuck his hands in his back pockets and stood with his legs in a wide stance like a man braced for the vagaries of life. When he smiled at some kids in the marching band that led off the parade, Shannon noted admiration in their eyes.

  Actually, his name was frequently mentioned in the newspaper regarding seminars he gave at the local schools on caring for pets and livestock. He also helped the 4-H kids on their projects for the county fair.

  Frowning, she admitted this didn't quite gibe with her image of him as an arrogant heartbreaker—

  "Hey, Officer Bannock! Look at me! Look at me! I'm in the parade!"

  Shannon grinned at the excited first-grader. When she called a greeting to a teacher, her breath appeared in long frosty plumes in front of her face.

  Brrr, it was really cold tonight, below freezing according to the thermometer outside the drugstore on the corner. Storm clouds hung over the valley, capping the peaks around them. According to the weatherman, snow should be falling at this very moment. She stamped her feet and wiggled her cold toes in her boots.

  "This is a night for warm slippers and hot chocolate," Rory said unexpectedly.

  Nodding, she met his gaze. His eyes, with laugh lines at the corners, weren't arrogant at all. Instead, she saw something alluring … a speculative quality, an invitation to passion, mystery and forbidden pleasures.

  Startled by this absurd fantasy, she nearly burst into laughter. Get real, she advised her heart, which had speeded up for some foolish reason. She turned sternly back to her duties. He truly was a handsome man, but so what? Handsome is as handsome does, as her aunt had once said.

  Shannon knew that from firsthand experience. Her parents had divorced when she was ten. She and her mother had stayed in Wind River, close to their roots, while her father went off to find himself or something. For years, Shannon and he had only exchanged Christmas cards.

  No, she definitely wasn't attracted to the too-handsome-for-their-own-good types. Home and hearth, a man and woman building a secure future for their children – those were the important things in life.

  Shaking her head, she wondered what had driven her thoughts in this direction. The season, she admitted … and for some odd reason, the man standing quietly beside her, watching the parade with a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  A single person – even one as attractive as Rory Daniels, she realized – was sort of an outsider in the midst of all the family-focused events in town.

  Waving at the Christmas Queen, she felt the loneliness dip all the way down to her freezing toes. Oh, well, it was just the holiday doldrums. Everyone had them at times.

  Odd, but the thought of Brad Sennet, the attorney she'd been dating for the past month, didn't console her. Brad was smart, dedicated to his work and interesting. He didn't make her heart pound like in songs and love poems, but so what?

  Friendship, steadfastness and respect – those were the qualities she wanted from a relationship, not a delirious loss of reason to passion, emotion … or a pretty face.

  "How about that cup of hot chocolate?" the handsome vet asked, gesturing toward the café where Christmas lights beckoned merrily through the deepening twilight.

  One of the teachers, another old school chum, overheard the invitation and waggled her eyebrows and clutched at her heart in a humorous display of awe.

  Shannon suppressed a chuckle. An internal imp urged her to accept his offer. That would certainly set the gossip mill to turning in the small town. However, there was Brad to think of. She didn't play games with people.

  "Thanks, but I'm still on duty," she told him.

  "I'll take a rain check," he said equably and headed back to his truck. "Merry Christmas."

  "Merry Christmas."

  Curiosity caused her to watch him return to his pickup. Her heart actually thumped a little, which surprised her. That organ was certainly acting up tonight.

  Mmm, maybe she had been hasty, turning down hot chocolate with the heartthrob of the county. Maybe this was one of those turning points in a person's destiny that, if allowed to slip away, was gone forever. Maybe the moment would have led to a great passion…

  This time she did laugh. Come on, she chided her overactive imagination.

  The fire engine went by, signaling the end of the parade. Shannon waved to the firefighters, removed the traffic barriers and stored them in the back of her four-wheel-drive SUV. Returning the barriers to the equipment garage, she mused on the encounter with Rory Daniels.

  His eyes and that brilliant smile made a person feel special, as if his every thought was only for her. She wondered why she'd a
lways considered him arrogant and distant. He hadn't seemed that way tonight.

  Putting aside her musing, she finished some overdue reports, said good-night to the clerk on duty and headed for the five-thousand-acre family ranch where her grandfather and two cousins waited for her.

  Checking the gauge, she realized she'd better stop for gas. It would be really stupid to get stuck out on a country road at nine-thirty at night, two days before Christmas. She pulled into the gas station-convenience market outside of town, then frowned in irritation that the ATM/credit card machine was out of order. She'd have to go inside and pay for the gas first. So much for technology.

  Pulling her collar up around her chin to keep out the cold wind blowing down the valley from the Wind River mountains west of them, she lowered her head and headed for the store. Snowflakes began to fall all at once.

  Great. Now the snow began – just when she had to drive five miles on an icy road.

  She yanked open the door and exclaimed in exasperation. Her glasses, a newly acquired nuisance, fogged over completely. She snatched them off with a gloved hand and headed for the counter, ATM card in hand.

  At that moment, she realized two things: the man behind the counter looked terrified and the man in front of the counter was holding a gun on him. She reacted instinctively as the muzzle of the gun swung her way.

  Ducking to one side, she dropped the ATM card and pulled the nine-millimeter semiautomatic from her holster.

  "Police!" she snapped. "Hands up!"

  The man uttered a curse.

  In the next second – it was as if time had gone into slow motion – she saw the flash from the gun and realized he was shooting at her. Shooting at her! No one had ever shot at her in all her twenty-seven years. She was more outraged than frightened. Her police academy training kicked in and she took evasive action.

  Darting behind a row of bread and pastries, she warned him a second time. "Put the gun down and your hands behind your head."

  The man answered with another shot.

  "Chancy, get down!" Shannon yelled at the store owner. When he dived behind the counter, she had a clear view and squeezed the trigger.

  The robber screamed as a red spot blossomed on his left shoulder. He spun away and slumped over the counter. The sudden silence was shocking.

  Shannon cautiously stepped from behind the stacks of bread. "Drop the gun on the floor. Put your hands above your head. Don't turn around," she ordered, surprised at how calm she sounded, considering that her heart was going like a jackhammer. She'd never shot a man before.

  The man slowly straightened.

  "Watch it!" the owner shouted, his white face appearing beyond the cash register.

  An explosion of light, white-hot and brilliant, blinded her. It seared through her head with a loud ringing noise that drowned all other sound. Through a strange rosy haze, she squeezed off another round. Her last thought was that she couldn't die. She had work to do, a future planned…

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  Rory Daniels clicked off the cell phone and muttered an expletive. His father and stepmother were coming to visit him sometime in January after spending Christmas with her mother in Phoenix.

  Don't do me any favors, he'd felt like saying.

  But of course he hadn't. As a dutiful son, he'd replied that he would look forward to seeing them. Ha.

  His stepmother was a flirt and a social climber. The woman had tried to seduce him the summer he'd turned fourteen and grown to six feet in a spurt of maturation that had left him feeling gangly and confused. That had been eighteen years ago.

  It had taken him a while to realize females of all ages were attracted to his looks, his money and his family name, one of the oldest in the county. None of which was him, the real person.

  He'd learned to keep his distance during the years he'd had to dodge his stepmother and try not to hurt his father, who doted on the woman. College had been a relief in comparison to his home life.

  But he'd learned another lesson while there.

  After falling for a fellow student and thinking she felt the same, he'd realized she was concerned only with appearances when he heard her tell a friend that his black hair and blue eyes were a perfect foil for her blond hair and blue eyes, and that they were by far the best-looking couple on campus. With him as her escort, she'd be the Christmas Carnival Queen easily.

  Her words had made him furious at the time. Now he only spared a cynical lift of an eyebrow over the episode and put both it and his stepmother out of his mind.

  Yawning as fatigue and the warmth from the pickup's heater stole over him, he thought of a hot shower and a warm bed. He'd been through a difficult birth with a kid's pony for the past three hours.

  The little mare had been too small for the size of the foal, but he'd managed to pull both through, the anxious but trusting eyes of the ten-year-old owner on him all the while. The girl had given him a strangling hug when he'd finished and pronounced both mare and foal well and safe.

  If he could find a woman who would gaze at him in adoration for his skills or something besides looks, money and name, he'd marry her in an instant

  So far, at thirty-two, he hadn't run across that paragon. He knew what he wanted – a woman who was soft-spoken, smart and loyal, someone gentle and safe.

  Safe? Now that was a weird thought.

  Also, his wife would have to be a good mother. He wanted kids, at least two or three of 'em. Yeah, a librarian or teacher would do just fine.

  A picture of Shannon Bannock came to mind – her smile as she led the children across the street, the way the kids in the parade had called to her. As a cop, she was sharp and competent. She was also headstrong, independent and argumentative. Not exactly the woman he had envisioned. So why had he invited her to the café?

  An impulse born of illogical attraction.

  The way she looked a man over as if judging his every thought and action was a challenge any red-blooded male would find hard to ignore. And she was built nicely, he added, amused by his thoughts.

  Glancing at the gas gauge, he saw he had less than a quarter tank. Better fill up in case of an emergency over the holiday. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. The whole county would close up at five so store owners could go home to their families. Nothing would be open on Christmas Day.

  He wheeled into the gas station and stopped at a pump. Fishing his credit card out of his wallet, he noticed the Out-of-Order sign on the machine.

  "Damn," he muttered and headed inside to pay. "What the hell?" were his next words as he stood inside the store.

  It looked like a scene from a bad movie – bodies lying in pools of fake blood, an eerie silence over the place.

  Only the blood wasn't fake. The salty, metallic scent of it filled his nostrils. It was real. And fresh. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air.

  Putting his wallet away, he bent to examine the first figure on the floor.

  Shannon Bannock, the cop he'd spoken to earlier at the parade, lay with a gun clutched in one hand, a pair of glasses in the other. She was on her stomach, her face to one side, her expression serene, as if she were merely napping for a moment.

  Blood pooled under her head from a gunshot wound. He couldn't see any other injuries. She opened her eyes briefly as he examined her.

  "I knew … you would come," she said cryptically, then gave a sound like a sigh and fainted again.

  "Yeah," he agreed, checking her for other injuries. He'd just bought a small acreage bordering the Windraven Ranch owned by Shannon's grandfather, which was probably where she was heading when she stopped at the gas station. Relieved that she wasn't dead, he quickly examined the other two and found them breathing. After calling 911, he retrieved his medical bag from the truck and began first aid on the three wounded people.

  The police officer was the most serious. It looked as if a bullet had entered her temple, then exited under her lower jaw. He thought of what a bullet could do to a person's brain.

  A few hours ago this
same woman had been directing traffic, efficient and confident at her task. He wondered what her future was going to be now and experienced an odd stab of pain or pity or something under his breastbone. He looked out the plate-glass window. Where the hell was that ambulance?

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  Chapter 2

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  Shannon woke to complete darkness, totally disoriented. She put a hand up to her eyes and discovered bandages.

  A hand caught hers. "Don't disturb the bandages," her cousin said.

  "Kate?"

  "Yes. Megan and I are here with you."

  "What happened? Where am I?"

  Speaking was difficult, as if she hadn't used her voice in a long time. It also hurt. She realized bandages were taped over her jaw and part of her neck, that they encircled her head and wrapped across her eyes.

  Her eyes? Why were they covered?

  Dizziness roiled over her, leaving her nauseated and frightened, a sensation that seemed all too familiar, although she couldn't recall ever experiencing it prior to this moment. Clutching Kate's hand, she realized she was terribly weak. And helpless.

  "You're in the hospital. You were lucky. A surgeon from Denver was up at the ski resort with his family. He came to the hospital when he heard the news—"

  "What news?" Nothing was making sense.

  "That you were shot," Megan said from the other side of the bed. "Don't you remember?"

  "No. Wait. Yes." Shannon paused and tried to see through the swirling fog in her brain. It even hurt to think. "I remember going in someplace and … yes, there was a guy with a gun. He shot at me. It really happened? It seems more like a nightmare than reality."

  "You relived it over and over during your coma," Kate said in soothing tones.

  "I've been in a coma?" This was becoming more bizarre by the minute.

  There was a slight pause. Shannon imagined the other two cousins looking at each other and wondering how much to tell her. "How long?" she asked, needing to know everything, to understand what had happened to her.