A Sheriff in Tennessee Page 9

  “If not the pictures, then what?”

  “She called me Ms. Ash.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Isabelle ducked her head as if embarrassed. For a moment he wondered if she’d just realized she stood in front of him with her shirt completely unbuttoned and her granny bra plainly visible. Her next words proved she wasn’t thinking about the state of her clothes or even the lack of them.

  “I was pretending,” she whispered.

  “You’ve still lost me.”

  Thankfully his libido seemed to have taken a powder. He was no longer aroused by the sight of her skin, the slope of her neck, the slant of her cheekbone. His curiosity was too alive and humming for that.

  “All my life I’ve pretended to be someone other than who I am. Today I was Florence Nightingale, healer of the sick, heroine of the Crimea.” Her lips twisted self-derisively. “Until Cass called me Ms. Ash.”

  His mind seemed to be running several seconds behind his ears today. He took a moment to align his thoughts. “Let me get this straight. You were acting like a nurse?”

  She tilted her head and peered at him. “Pretty stupid, huh?”

  “Stupid isn’t the word I’d use. More like clever. You had me fooled.” He shrugged. “Whatever works.”

  “Huh?”

  “If pretending got you through that mess today and enabled you to help people, pretend away.”

  She shook her head as though she couldn’t believe what she’d heard, then finished the rest of her water in one long swig. He studied her, concerned. Her color was better. Her hands no longer shook. But she still looked like hell. He should let her get in the shower, yet he had to ask.

  “You said you’ve always pretended to be someone other than who you are. But who wouldn’t want to be you?”

  Her smile was sad. “Walk a mile in my shoes, Klein, or maybe run a mile.”

  True enough. He shouldn’t assume her life was as fabulous as it appeared.

  “What did you pretend to be as a child?”

  “A pretty girl.”

  He frowned. Something wasn’t adding up here. “And now?”

  “The same.”

  “But you’re beautiful.”

  “Ah, Klein.” She tsked at him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that beauty is only skin deep?”

  “Yeah, ugly people.”

  She laughed, put her hand on his chest and pushed. “Go on now. I’m okay. I’ll take a shower. I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you going to pretend to be fine, or will you actually be fine?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Ha-ha. Get out.”

  He got out. She closed the door in his face. He waited to hear the click of the lock, but none came.

  Klein sighed. She trusted him. She thought he was her friend. She believed he would never walk back into that room, take her into his arms, make her forget a horrible day in the midst of an incredible night.

  And she’d be right.

  Women forever wanted Gabe Klein as their friend, and he was a good one. He liked women; he enjoyed talking to them, protecting them, being with them. What wasn’t to like? But secretly he’d always resented the fact that he never had a choice in the matter. He was never seen as anything more.

  Isabelle was never seen as anything more, either. He had to admit that he’d been as guilty as everyone else, putting her into the pretty-blond-bimbo category and being shocked when she turned out to be deeper than she looked.

  She made him nervous the way she raced through life, ran everywhere, always pushing, never at ease. He wanted to help her—both in her job and in her life. It was one of his most common failings—the helping—and his greatest strength.

  For the first time, Klein wanted to be a woman’s friend as much as she wanted to be his, and the novelty of that dazzled him.

  He could have resisted her beauty. What he couldn’t resist was her strength.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BELLE STEPPED OUT of the bathroom. “Oh,” she gasped, and practically dropped her towel. Klein was still there.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Sitting on the battered sofa that faced the bathroom, he had an arm along the back and an ankle on one knee. He looked as if he’d been staring at the door, waiting for her to appear. Had he thought she’d walk out naked?

  Belle sighed. Not Klein.

  Clutching the towel with one hand, she crossed the room to her dresser, reached inside and ferreted out fresh underwear. Performing such intimate tasks with him in the room made it seem that they’d been intimate themselves. Her entire body tingled beneath the towel. She glanced at Klein to see if he felt what she felt. He was reading the TV guide.

  She yanked a loose-fitting, jade-green sun-dress from the tiny doorless closet that housed her clothes and slammed the bathroom door behind her. The steam of the room brushed her cheeks, whispered along her neck, made her think of lovers she’d had, men she’d known.

  Since she’d grown into her face and out of her fat, men had become attentive. A childhood of being ignored or teased had made Belle relish the attention. She knew it was crazy, but the fact that Klein didn’t want her that way was perplexing.

  Belle finished dressing and pulled open the door. Klein had finished perusing the TV guide and now stared at her again. How could he be so damn calm, when her entire body was alive and kicking?

  “I’ll be fine now,” she repeated. “I’m sure you have work to do.”

  He dropped his foot from his knee, and when his boot connected with the wood floor, she started. He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment on her excessive jumpiness.

  “There’s always work to be done.”

  “Then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “And there’s a time not to do it,” he continued as if she hadn’t even spoken.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do, and that worries me.” He shook his head. “Isabelle, you need to relax before you leap out of your skin.”

  “All right.”

  She sat down at the kitchen table. But now that she’d crashed and gotten past it, she was so wired she could barely sit still. She had felt the same way a few hours before, and jogging home had taken away some of the madness. It appeared to be coming back. Belle shifted to the edge of her seat, and her foot began to tap.

  “Oh, yeah, you look practically asleep,” Klein drawled.

  “I’m fine.” She forced her foot to still, but keeping it that way took a whole lot of effort.

  “If you say ‘fine’ one more time, I’m gonna get mean.”

  Belle considered that. Though Klein was big and could no doubt get mean if he was of a mind, she just couldn’t wrap her thoughts around the idea of Klein and mean in the same sentence.

  He lounged on her couch as if he had all day to rest there, when in fact the station must be a madhouse. Just thinking about what he had to do was making her nervous, and before she knew it, her foot went tapping again.

  Klein’s gaze lowered to her heel, then returned to her face. “Why did you jog all the way back to Pleasant Ridge?”

  She shrugged. “Because it was there?”

  He continued to stare at her face, patient as those mountains she’d spent the morning in the shadow of, until she was compelled to tell him the truth—or, at least, some of it.

  “Today I was in a situation where all I could do was my best, and it wasn’t good enough. The results were out of my control. So I ran, because then I’m in control of my body, my pace, my heart rate. When I push myself harder and farther, the things that are out of control fade because I’m becoming stronger. I feel like I can do anything—”

  She broke off at his mystified expression.

  “You’re big on control?”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  His lips twisted. “No, honey, not everyone.”

  When most men called her honey, she wanted to kick them where it count
ed. If the mayor had tried it, she might have given in to the urge. But when Klein called her honey, she got the idea that it was an endearment meant just for her. Foolish, but then, she hadn’t heard him call anyone else honey lately.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” He stood.

  She gaped. “Walk?

  “The opposite of run. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  “But—but—shouldn’t you—”

  “Should. Could. But I’m not. Virgil loves paperwork. I’m gonna give him the thrill of a lifetime and let him do it all.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “That makes two of us, but I’m thinking maybe we should try, hmm? You need to calm down, Isabelle.”

  “I’m fi—”

  “Ah!” He held up one hand. “I wasn’t talking about just right now. I was talking about the rest of your life. You’re gonna have a stroke before you’re forty. You ever smell the flowers? Watch the sunset? Walk a dog?”

  “Not recently.”

  “I’m thinking not ever. I said I’d teach you everything I know about being a small-town sheriff. There’s more to it than reciting code and scrapin’ roadkill off the freeway, although the glamour of that is hard to ignore. Lesson number four—you gotta slow down, honey, or no one will ever believe you’re a Tennessee sheriff.”

  Belle stared at him for a moment. Something had changed, but she wasn’t sure what. Klein was talking to her as if he wanted to help her, not as if he was being forced to. Since that was what she’d wanted all along, Belle wasn’t going to question why.

  She stood, too. “A walk sounds good right about now.”

  His smile soothed her as nothing else ever had. His no-nonsense style, his easy way of moving, his gentleness made her yearn to be near him, or at least to understand him.

  Together they left her apartment, and as they headed down the street, Klein contacted Virgil. He’d been right. The old man was delighted to be left in charge of the paperwork.

  “I never did hear what happened to cause that mess out there today,” she said. “Vehicular, obviously.”

  “And hunting and feudal. All of the above on my handy-dandy list of possibilities.”

  Belle glanced at him. He appeared quite serious. “How could it possibly be all three?”

  “Busload of tourists ran afoul of a feudal argument being settled with a hunting rifle. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the moron with the gun is a terrible shot. He missed his target and hit a tire on the tourist bus. Slam-bam, we’ve got an accident.”

  “That began with a feud?”

  He nodded. “As near as I’ve been able to decipher, this one is over land, though Lord knows how it began. There are all sorts of disagreements among families and neighbors that seem to last for centuries around here. One thing leads to another, and suddenly folks are doing more than giving one another the cold shoulder. They’re actively chasing one another down the mountain.”

  “With a gun.”

  “Which is usually when I become involved.”

  Belle nodded. Working in a business comprised mostly of women, she had seen feuds aplenty. Women never forgot; they rarely forgave; and they could be downright vicious even without a gun.

  Despite the clock, which said late afternoon, people strolled on the street as if it wasn’t the middle of the week, the tail end of a workday. Everyone nodded and said hello to the sheriff and hello to Ms. Ash.

  “No secrets here,” she observed.

  “You thought there would be?”

  “I guess I thought it would take more than a day for the news to get around.”

  He snorted. “You’ve clearly never lived in a small town.”

  “Not a small town, no.”

  She’d lived in a small community. News had traveled fast there, too. But with the nearest neighbor several miles away, not quite as fast as news traveled here.

  “In a town like Pleasant Ridge, a stranger stands out like a wolf in the middle of a sheep farm,” he said.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Klein lifted, then lowered, his big beautiful hands. “That’s one of the things I love about small towns, especially as a sheriff. The second a stranger stays around longer than a day, the populace starts to hum. No one sneaks into a place like Pleasant Ridge, and that makes our little world safe.”

  She glanced at him. “You love it here, don’t you.”

  Surprise flickered over his face. “I’ve only been in town a month, but yeah, I guess I do. I’d like Pleasant Ridge to become my home.” The longing in his voice shocked her as much as did his next words. “It would be my first.”

  Belle blinked. “That’s impossible. Everyone has a home.”

  “Not necessarily. I’ve had houses, apartments, condos, barracks, too. But a home…” He shook his head. “I’ve never felt that I belonged in any of the places that I’ve lived.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He tipped his head. “Not your fault. Where’s home to you, Isabelle?”

  In the past whenever she’d been asked that question, she had smiled brightly and made up the name of a town, then given the press a useless detail of her life so they’d forget the question.

  Not that it would be hard to discover her place of birth. But so far no one had cared enough to go searching for the nonexistent towns she’d thrown out, or to plow through the hundreds of families by the name of Ash scattered across the country.

  Eventually someone would, and then she’d have to deal with the ramifications of having her life dissected in the media. Still, she was tired of evading the truth, and she discovered she didn’t have the energy or the inclination to lie to Klein.

  “I was born in Virginia.”

  “Ah, that explains it.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes you twist a word just so and make me think of places where there are warm winters and trees that flower. Then the next word out of your mouth comes from somewhere there’s ice and snow and all the flowers are hardy, as well as the trees.”

  She smiled at his contrast of the South and the North. “I took speech lessons. Can’t sound like a hick if you’re going to get anywhere in my world.”

  “You plannin’ on talking like a California lawyer while you’re pretending to be a Tennessee sheriff?”

  “That’s the joke on me. All those lessons, all that money, and my first big break I gotta forget all about it.”

  “Maybe you should have just been yourself in the first place.”

  Belle stumbled, but quickly recovered her footing. Just when she’d begun to trust him, he made a comment like that.

  “You have no idea of the responsibilities in my life,” she said quietly.

  He glanced at her, then away. “You could tell me.”

  She considered it. She very nearly spilled the entire depressing mess. And not about her past as Big Belle, not even the secret of being a high school dropout, certainly not her eating–exercising neurosis. There were some things a girl just did not discuss with a man she was attracted to, even if he did find her less interesting than the TV guide.

  Instead, she very nearly told him about her father, the wheelchair, the operations—past and future—her mother’s fears, her brothers’ needs. All the pressures that kept her doing whatever she had to do to make enough money to keep her family afloat and her father alive.

  “Hey, slow down. It’s not a race.”

  Belle glanced at Klein, to discover she’d left him several steps behind. Thinking about her family, her responsibilities, how doggone messed up her head was, had made her push their stroll to a flat-out power walk.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, and forced herself to slow down. The moment for sharing had passed. She’d just keep all her secrets to herself. She was used to it.

  “That’s better.” He walked at her side again. “One thing I’ve learned, Isabelle—it’s the journey that’s important, not how fast you get there.”

  She wasn’t going to contradict him, but the one thi
ng she’d learned was that the journey was irrelevant. Fast and first was the only way she would get anywhere at all.

  They reached Highway B and continued on out of Pleasant Ridge without pause. “Where’s the journey taking us tonight?” she asked.

  “I thought we’d stroll out to my place, have a drink, a snack even, then take Clint for a walk into town. He doesn’t get out much.”

  “You don’t have to come back here for me. I can make it on my own.”

  “I’m not doing it for you. I didn’t get my walking quota in today and I’m feeling a mite stressed.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. Stressed? Klein? He was walking so slowly she wanted to grab his hand and tug him along. But she had a feeling that such behavior would only make him walk even slower. How could he possibly be in the shape he was in, when he strolled every damn place?

  “Besides,” he continued, “I might have let Virgil be in charge a while, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to check on him later.”

  “And anyone else he might have arrested while you were out?”

  Klein slapped her on the back as if she were just one of the guys. “Now you’re catching on.”

  IN KLEIN’S EXPERIENCE women liked to talk. Since he’d never been the chatty sort, he didn’t mind listening.

  Isabelle was different. She didn’t offer anything. She responded to questions with the barest of answers. She didn’t feel the need to fill the lengthening silence with useless words.

  She was hiding something; he just wasn’t sure what.

  He had to admit, though, that he enjoyed their walk to his house. Usually he walked alone and preferred it that way. He did not have to entertain anyone, and he did not have to pace himself to the footsteps of others. But he had none of those concerns with Isabelle. She kept her mouth shut, and she kept on walking.

  They turned into his yard and without conscious thought, Klein disguised his gun, then made it disappear, even though Clint was nowhere in sight.

  “Where is he?” Isabelle’s gaze swept the yard.

  “Who knows. He likes to pretend he’s a hunting dog and stalk around in the back field.”