Slow Dance with the Sheriff by Nikki Logan

Author:Nikki Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-10-20T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

DEPUTY slamming full into him couldn’t have done a better job at knocking the air clean out of Jed’s body. He stood, frozen, and stared at her.

‘You’re a Calhoun?’

‘It’s why I’m here in Larkville,’ she whispered.

Visiting Jess. He’d not let himself quiz her further on that once he got to know her. It was none of his business then. But now…

‘You’re a Calhoun.’

He stepped back, a deep, sick realisation growing in his gut. She was here to meet them. He knew the Calhouns; there was no way they wouldn’t ask her to stay, to bring her into their care. He regulated his breathing to manage the roar building up inside him.

She’d say yes; why wouldn’t she? He’d never met a woman crying out more strongly for somewhere to belong.

She’d say yes and she’d never go back to New York.

‘I wanted you to know, before we—’ Ellie swallowed ‘—went any further.’

Further? His body screamed. He’d gone quite far enough. Yet nowhere near where he wanted to be. He lifted his eyes and stared at her. ‘I thought you were only here for a few weeks.’

Her face pinched. ‘I know.’

‘But you waited until now to tell me?’

‘I didn’t know if…this morning was a one-off, an accident…’

‘You think my tongue just fell into your mouth?’

She winced at his crude snipe. ‘I’m sorry that you’re shocked but it wasn’t my secret to tell.’

‘So why tell it now?’

‘Because we were about to…’

‘What?’ Do something irretrievable?

‘Go further,’ she whispered.

He searched around for something to hang his anger on rather than hating himself for being stupid enough to let this happen. He knew how hard she was searching for something more meaningful in her life. Yet he’d let himself want her anyway. To need her. And that scared the hell out of him. ‘You could have told me this morning. At the dance. Any time before this.’

On some level he knew he should be grateful she spoke up now and not even later. But he just wasn’t capable of more than a raging kind of grief. Ellie was a Calhoun. That meant she wasn’t just passing through; she was about as forever as it came.

Her colour drained more. ‘Yes. I should have.’

His snort damned her. ‘You think?’

It was her wince and Deputy’s quick slink away around behind the sofa that told him his voice was too loud. His anger was really disproportionate to what she was supposed to be to him—a casual thing—but it was burbling up from deep inside him just like the soak did from the aquifer.

Confusion only made him madder. ‘That’s it, then. We’re done.’

The pale shock left Ellie’s skin, pushed aside by her own angry flush. ‘Why? Why does it make any difference to us now? Either way I’m out of your life in a week.’

‘You’re part of my town’s biggest and most influential family. You couldn’t be more off-limits to me.’ He clung to that like a lifeline. It was better than risking exposing the truth.

‘Why? Just because of your rule…?’

Her pain burned him harder the more he tried to ignore his body’s response to it.

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