Man Behind The Badge. Pamela Toth

for someone his age.

      Robin’s hand tightened on the shoulder strap of her purse as she watched him start the engine and lower the window. Perhaps he was too shorthanded to fire her just yet, but he still might.

      “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, raising her voice. “My car—”

      “You’re here now.” He barely spared her a glance as he backed up. “My cell phone number’s on the counter.”

      Slightly dazed, Robin watched him drive away. She was hot, thirsty and nearly broke. She needed a bathroom, a place to stay and, thanks to the gold-plated water pump, an advance on her pay.

      “Not much of a welcome, huh?”

      The unexpected touch on her shoulder and the male voice at her ear startled a shriek out of her. She spun around to see a man wearing a shiny silver starred pinned to his khaki uniform shirt.

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He flashed a smile that revealed straight white teeth and twin dimples. Only a nose that looked as if it must have been broken saved him from being entirely too handsome. “I’m Charlie Winchester, your local sheriff,” he added, touching two fingers to the brim of his hat.

      “Uh, hi,” Robin managed, still a little shaken. Her nerves had been stretched tight during the long drive from Chicago, and her shoulders ached from hunching over the steering wheel since she’d left the shabby motel early this morning.

      But wasn’t Winchester the name Doc Harmon had mentioned when he’d told her where he was headed? Did they own the town? She could hardly ask the sheriff, whose dark eyes studied her with leisurely thoroughness from behind amber lenses.

      Robin knew what he’d see, a plain woman with black hair cut ruthlessly short and a face free of anything fancier than road dust. She wasn’t a girly girl, and she didn’t bother much with paints and perfumes. It irked her that she had to tip her head back in order to look at his face instead of his wide chest. She was small but wiry, and as her aunt Dot used to say, Robin was tall on the inside, where it counted.

      Robin wasn’t so sure of that anymore, and her aunt was no longer around to ask.

      “I’ll bet you’re the new vet,” the sheriff said as if he was prompting her to speak.

      Robin’s tongue came unstuck, and she peeled it off the roof of her mouth. “How’d you guess?”

      He folded his tanned, muscular arms across his chest. His hands, she noticed, were ringless. “It wasn’t a guess.” He feigned a hurt expression. “I get paid to know things. That’s why I’m the sheriff. Besides, you’ve got out-of-state plates, a rental trailer in tow and the doc expected you yesterday.”

      “Pretty clever of you,” she replied dryly, taking a step back from all that hunky broad-shouldered masculinity before it gave her the vapors. Good manners kicked in, courtesy of her late aunt. “My name’s Robin Marlowe.”

      His grin widened. “See, I was right. Reading clues is part of my job, that and chasing bad guys. There aren’t a lot of those in Waterloo, so I have time to greet newcomers, too.”

      “Kind of like a welcoming committee packing heat,” she drawled, her gaze flicking to the imposing holster on his hip.

      His eyes widened, but his laugh came easy. “Yes, ma’am, I guess you could say that.”

      From inside the clinic, a phone started ringing and a dog began to bark.

      “Oh, nuts,” she muttered, turning. “I gotta go.” She didn’t mind the interruption, but instead of ogling Sheriff Tex she should have been looking for the bathroom while she’d had the chance.

      “Nice to meet you,” she called automatically over her shoulder as she hurried up the front steps.

      “You, too, Doc Marlowe,” the sheriff replied. “My office is right down the street, if you need anything. It’s the one with the bars on the windows.”

      She waved, but didn’t look back. “Yeah, thanks. See you.”

      Charlie Winchester stroked his chin thoughtfully as he watched her disappear.

      “Count on it, sweetheart,” he murmured. For such a little thing, she had legs like a colt—long and fine-boned. And lips a man could settle into like a featherbed, if they were anywhere near as lush as they looked.

      Welcoming committee, huh? Checking out the new arrivals was part of his job, even the ones who weren’t cute as pixies and reportedly single like this new little gal. He’d better talk to her again, though, just to make sure she wasn’t really an escaped con or an illegal, impersonating the vet’s new helper in order to commit some nefarious crime in Charlie’s town.

      He hadn’t meant to scare her when he’d touched her shoulder, but she’d gone as stiff as a calf stuck in a blizzard. The sight of his badge hadn’t seemed to relax her a bit. Her big brown eyes had stayed wary, without a spark of female awareness to warm them, and her mouth hadn’t softened. Despite the gun at Charlie’s hip, most women saw right away that he was no more threat than a six-foot teddy bear.

      From eight months to eighty, he liked women, always had, and they usually liked him right back. Robin hadn’t seemed overly impressed, though, not even by his uniform, tailored and pressed at the local laundry, or his badge. It was something a couple of the local ladies still gushed over, as though they were picturing him wearing the star and not much else. Made a man darned uncomfortable, being looked at like that.

      Robin Marlowe had captured his interest. No, his “professional concern,” he corrected himself, even though it was doubtful that Doc Harmon would hire an assistant with outstanding warrants or felonious intentions—even one compact enough for Charlie to easily scoop up and cuddle or whose short haircut exposed earlobes begging to be nibbled.

      He hitched up his belt and eyed the clinic. The ringing of the phone had stopped while he stood in the street like a lovesick calf, but the dog’s rhythmic barking kept time with the sound of the new vet’s voice through the open doorway. It had a husky quality that hinted at smoky, dimly lit bars and honky-tonk women.

      Curiously Charlie circled her car, a nondescript tan Rabbit with barely legal tires, Illinois plates and a utility trailer hitched behind it. On the back seat of the car rested a hard-sided suitcase like you’d find in a thrift shop, and several cardboard cartons. One was open and held books, probably veterinary tomes. The other boxes were taped shut. Behind the front seat was a pair of high rubber boots that looked new, an electric fan that didn’t, a coffeemaker and a cheap toaster, cords all neatly coiled. On the front passenger seat were an empty water bottle, two candy wrappers and a Colorado road map that had been refolded in correctly. Some kind of crystal dangled from the rearview mirror, its faceted surfaces sparkling in the sun light.

      Charlie debated whether to go inside and ask her a few more questions, maybe see if she’d be interested in dinner or help in finding a place to stay, but the cell phone clipped to his belt chose that moment to claim his attention. Filing away his first impressions of Waterloo’s newest resident, he checked to see if a crime wave had just hit town.

      Robin had been watching Sheriff Winchester through the front window of the clinic as she tried to explain to a suspicious-sounding older woman why she was answering Doc Harmon’s phone and not his “regular girl.”

      “I don’t know where Erline is today,” Robin said for the third time, explaining again who she was and what had happened to the real vet. The term hadn’t exactly endeared the caller to Robin, but she resisted the urge to tell the old bat she had duct-taped the “real vet” and stuffed him in the supply closet just so she could have the thrill of this phone call. Curbing her tongue wasn’t easy, especially when the pressure in her bladder increased with each word.

      By the time she’d taken a message and glanced outside, the sheriff had disappeared. After she’d found the bathroom and made use of it with a groan of relief, she did a bit of exploring.

      The