Big Sky River by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HQN
Published: 2012-12-17T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

NOTHING HAD HAPPENED between him and Tara, Boone silently insisted as he and Scamp left her place later that evening, but something had changed, something profound, and it was a burr under his hide trying to figure out exactly what the shift meant.

Hell, he still wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to see Tara so badly in the first place, and never mind her tentative suggestion that, after a hard day, he’d probably just “needed to talk to somebody.” The fact was, there were plenty of people he could have spent time with—close friends, any of his deputies (except McQuillan), the bartender over at the Boot Scoot Tavern. The waitresses at the bowling alley snack bar, for God’s sake.

Instead, he’d chosen Tara Kendall, of all people. The pseudo chicken rancher. The big-city sophisticate who looked down on his battered double-wide, his sorry-looking yard and, most likely, she disapproved of the fact that he’d left the boys with Molly and Bob for so long.

To her, he was probably still just the redneck sheriff of a nowhere county, irresponsible to boot. Secretly, she probably marveled that he had all his teeth and no broken-down appliances rusting on his sagging porch.

Okay, yes, Tara had been genuinely concerned about Dawson McCullough, the McCullough family and the accident that, even in the best-case scenario, would turn Patsy and her children’s lives upside down. Anybody with half a heart, with a shred of compassion for their fellow human beings, would care about a tragedy like that, and care deeply.

What nettled Boone was that he hadn’t just wanted to be with Tara, hadn’t simply chosen to be with her. It was that he’d needed to, the way he needed his next breath, his next heartbeat. Bottom line: he hadn’t had a choice.

And Boone didn’t like not having choices. Before tonight, he would have sworn he didn’t have an impulsive bone in his body. Despite all that, he’d left the office with the dog, hours after his usual quitting time, and driven straight to the chicken farm, like he was on autopilot or something, a moth winging its bumbling way into the bright core of a flame.

Finally home, but still sitting in his cruiser, with the headlights washing over his weedy yard and Scamp watching him expectantly from the passenger seat, pointy ears perked and fuzzy head tilted to one side, Boone tightened his grip on the steering wheel, remembering Corrie and how much he’d come to love her after the first dazzling passion began to let up a little.

They’d been nothing but kids when they got together, he and Corrie, awash in hormones and the kind of reckless optimism only the very young can sustain for long, but all too soon the realities of grocery bills and rent and car payments, along with an unexpected pregnancy, had matured them considerably. For all the challenges, totally against the odds, they’d made their marriage work.

“If we don’t give up,” Corrie had said to him once, after a yelling match and a bout of Olympic-quality makeup sex, “we’ll be okay, Boone.

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