by Zoe Chant
May be considered dangerous, the fax had read.
While he stared at the redhead and she stared back at him—or rather, at the sheriff's uniform, probably—his bear woke up fully, stretched, and announced, Her.
What? Axl thought.
Her, his bear repeated. That one. Mine. Ours.
Great. It just figured. His super-picky bear had finally found a mate ... and she was a wanted felon.
Chapter Two: Tara
"Good morning, and welcome to Marge's Diner! Can I start you off with a cup of coffee?"
Good thing the morning had been slow. She'd worked all day yesterday, and got up early this morning to come back for another shift. It was part of the deal she had with Sammie. She hadn't been hired officially; her name wasn't on any paperwork anywhere. In return, she was willing to pull the kind of hours that should've had Sammie Jo Macklin hauled before the Better Business Bureau.
It'd seemed like a win/win at first. Tara wasn't planning to stay long, just enough time to build up some cash and then go to ... well, she wasn't sure where, but she didn't dare stay in one place very long. Working sixteen hours a day, she sure did rake in the tips—at least what tips there were to rake, in a tiny town like this one.
By this point, though, her back and hips, knees and feet were all protesting vigorously. What she wouldn't give to be able to sleep in, rather than getting up at five in the morning to help Sammie Jo open the diner.
But it was a better place than a lot of others she could've landed in.
She'd been hitching a ride across the state with a trucker, down to a handful of loose change in her pocket, when they stopped here for dinner. A sign in the window read "HELP WANTED". As soon as Tara stepped inside, she could see it was no joke. There were only two employees in the whole place, the short-order cook and a frazzled middle-aged waitress who turned out to be the owner.
"I'll help out tonight, wash dishes and whatever, if you knock off the cost of dinner," Tara had offered.
She'd made similar offers in other places. Sometimes people took her up on it; other times they looked at her like she was something they'd scraped off the bottom of their shoe. Sammie Jo Macklin was the first kind of person. All she'd asked was, "You ever do any waitressing, hon?"
"Yep, sure have," Tara lied.
She was pretty sure Sammie had caught on to her new waitress's lack of experience the first time Tara messed up an order—which was the first order she took. But Tara was fast and hard-working; she always had been, even if it had been a different kind of work, before all of this happened.
At the end of the evening, when Sammie had flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED, Tara's trucker was long gone. Well, it was all right; that guy had been openly creeping on her for the last hundred miles or so. She'd just have to thumb a ride with someone else.
Tara had collapsed in one of the booths, toed off her shoe, and began massaging her foot.
"You did good tonight, hon," Sammie told her. "You want a job?"
So they worked out a deal. There was a room in the back where Tara could sleep, and she'd fill in wherever Sammie needed somebody—which might be seven days a week, since Sammie currently had no help except a couple of college kids working part time on their summer break. In return, Sammie would pay her wages under the table, and she could keep all the tips she took in.
Tara was pretty sure Sammie thought she was a battered wife, fleeing an abusive husband. Although she felt guilty about it, she'd gone ahead and played along, never quite lying but not disabusing Sammie of her misconceptions, either. If Sammie knew the truth, she'd throw Tara out on her ear—and call the cops too.
And she liked Sammie Jo. Sammie was a big, brassy bleach-blonde with a tough-love attitude toward the world. Sammie had been willing to give an under-the-table, illegal job to someone who she didn't know and, for all she knew, could be an escaped serial killer. It wasn't charity—she made Tara work for it. But it was a hell of a lot more than most people would have done.
Tara wasn't sure if she could really consider herself and Sammie Jo friends, exactly. They hadn't known each other long, and most of what they did when they were together was work. But the idea of leaving saddened her.
Story of her life, though. Until she could find a way out of her current situation, this was her new normal. No point in getting attached to people when she knew she'd have to leave them.
"Do you want a warm-up on your coffee, sir?" she asked mechanically, shifting her weight to ease her sore feet.
The bell hanging from the door handle jingled, just as the cook called, "Order up!" Tara ran to get the plate of eggs and ham, snatching up a menu while she was at the counter, and deposited the warm plate on the customer's table. She had to top off two more coffee cups before she had a chance to look over and see if the new customer had managed to seat himself okay, or if he was hanging around in the doorway waiting for someone to tell him where to sit.
And then she realized the guy was a freaking cop.
And he was looking at her.
She stopped in her tracks, her head whirling with the most confusing mix of emotions she'd ever experienced in her life. The guy was a freaking hot cop. When his brown-green eyes met hers, a bolt of heat shot through her, straight down to her groin. His short blond hair was slightly hat-tousled, and he had exactly the kind of rugged, chiseled good looks that had always turned her head.
But—he was a cop. Probably the local sheriff, she thought; the brown uniform with its star-shaped badge looked like a sheriff's.
Act natural, she told herself firmly, stiffening her legs as her knees tried to turn to water. If you go running off, he'll know there's something up.
She forced herself to walk toward him. Is this how I normally walk? Am I acting suspicious? It was a lot like trying to walk while drunk, the way she ended up focusing so hard on her normal mannerisms that she couldn't even tell what was normal anymore.
"Good morning, sir," she said brightly. Oh god, he was so hot. Being near him literally made her shiver, and not just with the fear of discovery. It wasn't fair. "Welcome to Marge's. Would you like coffee?"
He didn't answer. She thought he might not even have heard her. He was looking at her with a strange intensity in his strikingly gorgeous greenish-brown eyes. Then he said, "Tara Malloy?"
Tara had read in books of people turning white with shock. At that moment, she found out what it felt like. All the blood left her head. There was a roaring in her ears, and her legs wobbled.
She hadn't told Sammie her real name. She'd introduced herself as Tanya.
He knows who I am.
Which means he knows I'm on the run.
Any chance of smoothly covering for her awkwardness had shot right out the window when she froze like a deer in the headlights at the sound of her real name. And now Sexy Sheriff was getting up. And up ...
He was so tall she almost expected his head to brush the ceiling. Even in her panic, she couldn't help noticing how his broad shoulders filled out his uniform.
"Miss Malloy," he said. He sounded regretful, and maybe a little choked, like he was fighting some kind of internal battle. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
Tara threw the coffeepot at him.
***
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