Sarah And The Sheriff. Allison Leigh

He shook the principal’s hand. “Still can’t believe you’re head honcho here.” Joe Gage had been a hellion of the highest order back when they’d been kids. “Guess they don’t hold a little thing like blowing up the science room against a man.”

      “Guess not. They made you a deputy, and you were in that room with me.”

      “Whoa, Dad.” Eli sounded impressed.

      The principal chuckled. “Come on. I’ll take you down to Eli’s class.” He looked at the boy as they stepped into the corridor once more. “Miss Clay. You’ll like her.”

      Max’s boot heels scraped the hard floor. Clay. Another name from the past.

      Well, why not?

      The Clay family had plenty of members—seemed to him there’d been a teacher among them.

      For a moment, he wished he’d been more inclined to listen to his mother’s talk of Weaver over the years. But she knew his reasons for not wanting to hear about the town well enough. Weaver was where Max’s father betrayed everyone they knew. It was where Tony Scalise had abandoned them. And on her visits to see him and Eli, she barely mentioned details about her life back home. Mostly because it generally led to an argument between them.

      Max had wanted Genna to leave a long time ago. To join him in California.

      For reasons that still escaped him, she’d been just as determined to stay.

      The principal stopped in front of a closed classroom door. Through the big square window that comprised the top half of the door, he could see the rows of tables—situated in a sort of half circle—all occupied by kids about Eli’s size. At the head of the class, he caught a glimpse of the teacher. Slender as a reed, dressed in emerald green from head to toe. A little taller than average and definitely young, he noted. Her arms waved around her as she spun in a circle, almost as if she were acting out some play.

      Max started to smile.

      Then the teacher stopped, facing the door with its generous window head-on. Through the glass, her sky-blue eyes met his.

      He felt the impact like a sucker punch to the kidneys.

      He’d only known one woman with eyes that particular shade.

      The principal pushed open the door. “Pardon the interruption, Miss Clay,” he said, ushering Eli inside. “This is your new student, Eli Scalise. Eli, this is Miss Clay.”

      Max stood rooted to the floor outside the doorway.

      Sarah.

      She was no longer looking at him with those eyes that were as translucent as the Wyoming winter sky, but at Eli.

      Her smile was warm. Slightly crooked. And it made Max wonder if he’d imagined the frigid way she’d looked at him through the window.

      “Eli,” she greeted. “Come on in. Take off your coat. Can’t have you roasting to death on your first day here.” She gestured at the line of coats hanging on pegs. “We do our roasting only on Wednesdays.”

      Eli shot Max a studiously bored look. But Max still saw the twitch of Eli’s lips.

      A good sign. Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about Eli, after all.

      He looked back at Sarah again.

      What the hell was she doing here? A teacher of all things. When they’d been involved—

      He cut off the thought.

      She gave him no more attention than she gave the principal as she showed Eli where to sit, and after assuring herself that he had the usual school supplies, she moved back to the front of the class. Without a glance their way, she picked up right where she’d left off. “Okay, so if the tornado is spinning to the right,” she turned on her heels and the braid she’d woven her hair into swayed out from her spine.

      Max started when Joe Gage headed out of the classroom and pulled the door closed, cutting off whatever else Professor Sarah was imparting. “She’s a good teacher,” Joe said. “Strict. But she really cares about her kids.”

      Max headed back up the corridor with Joe. “How long has she been here?”

      “This will be her sixth year. So, Donna tells me you’ve already completed all the paperwork for Eli. You put your mom down as his caretaker? Is Genna up to that?”

      He could have asked a dozen questions about Sarah Clay.

      He asked none.

      “Eli doesn’t need a lot of care. He’s pretty independent. He’ll do as much taking care of her as she does him.” He didn’t like feeling as though he had to explain himself. “With the job I might not always be available. You know. If Eli got sick or something, my mother can make decisions about him.”

      “Fine, fine.” Joe accepted the explanation without a qualm. “I’ll be glad when Genna can make it back to work here. So, I know Eli lost his mother a year or so back. I’m sorry to hear it. Anything else in your personal life that he’s dealing with that we might need to know?”

      Max shrugged. “He’s annoyed as hell that I took him out of his regular school to come here.”

      Joe smiled. “That’s not too surprising.” He stopped outside the office. “Any questions you have?”

      None that he intended to ask Joe Gage. He shook his head and stuck out his hand. “Good to see you again.”

      “Deputy.” Donna waved at him from her desk. “The sheriff just called here looking for you.”

      Not surprising. “I’m on my way over to the station house.”

      “I’ll let him know for you,” she offered.

      “Don’t worry about Eli,” Joe told him. “He’s in good hands.”

      Sarah Clay’s hands, Max thought, as he headed out to his SUV.

      It might have been seven years, but he still remembered the feel of those particular hands.

      He climbed in the truck, and started it up, only to notice the brown bag sitting on the floor. Eli’s lunch.

      Dammit.

      He grabbed it and strode back inside, right on past the office, around two corners, to the third door. He knocked on the window.

      Once again, inside the classroom, Sarah stopped and looked at him.

      The glass protected him from the fallout of that glacial look. He definitely hadn’t imagined it, then.

      She moved across the room and opened the door. “What is it, Deputy?”

      He held up the lunch sack. “Eli forgot this.”

      Her eyes seemed to focus somewhere around his left ear. She snatched the bag from his fingers and turned away.

      He started to say her name. But the door closed in his face.

      Chapter Two

      By the end of the day, Sarah felt as if she’d been through the wringer. She didn’t have to look hard for the reason why, either.

      Not when he sat in the chair next to her desk, a sullen expression on his young face. The rest of the students had already been dismissed for the day.

      She pushed aside the stack of papers on her desk and folded her hands together on the surface, leaning toward him. All day, she’d been searching for some physical resemblance between him and his father, and it annoyed her to no end.

      Unlike Max, who was as dark as Lucifer, his son was blond-haired and blue-eyed and had the appearance of an angel. But he’d been an absolute terror.

      Nevertheless, she was determined to keep her voice calm and friendly. “Eli, you’ve had a lot of changes in your life lately. And I know that starting at a new school can be difficult. Why