Slow Dance with the Sheriff. Nikki Logan

wouldn’t compute. It was still completely zazzled by those eyes and by the butterfly beating its way out of her heart. ‘In a B & B?’

      ‘This is my house.’

      Oh.

      She stepped back to look at the number above the door. Seriously, how had she made it to thirty in one piece?

      ‘You have the right place, Ellie.’ Ellie. It sounded so much better in his voice. More like a breath than a word. ‘This is the Alamo.’

      ‘I can’t stay with you!’ And just like that her social skills fluttered off after her sense on the stiff breeze.

      But Texans had thick hides, apparently, because he only smiled. ‘I rent out the room at the back.’ And then, when her feet didn’t move, he added, ‘It’s fully self-contained.’ And when she still didn’t move… ‘Ellie, I’m the sheriff. You’ll be fine.’

      Desperation warred with disappointment and more than a little unease. There was no lovely Texan nana preparing soup for her, but he was offering a private—warm, as her skin prickled up again at the wind’s caress—place to spend the night, and she’d be his customer so she’d set the boundaries for their dealings with each other.

      Though if her galloping heart was any indication that wasn’t necessarily advisable.

      ‘Can I see it?’

      His smile twisted and took her insides with it. ‘I’d wager you wouldn’t be here if you’d found so much as an empty washroom. Just take it. It’s clean and comfortable.’

       And just meters from you…

      She tossed her hair back and met his gaze. ‘I’d like to see it, please.’

      He inclined his head and stepped out onto the porch, crowding her back against a soft-looking Texan outdoor setting. She dropped her eyes. The house’s comforting warmth disappeared as he pulled the door closed behind him and she rubbed her hands along her bare, slim arms. This cotton blouse was one of her girliest, and prettiest, and she’d been pathetically keen to make a good impression on Jessica Calhoun.

      She hadn’t really imagined still being outdoors in it as the sun set behind the Texan hills.

      She followed him off the porch, around the side of the house and down a long pathway between his stone house and the neighbors’.

      It was hard not to be distracted by the view.

      Her fingers trailed along the stonework walls as they reached the end of the path. Jed reached up and snaffled a key from the doorframe.

      ‘Pretty poor security for a county sheriff.’ Or was it actually true what they said about small-town America? She couldn’t imagine living anywhere you didn’t have double deadlocks and movement sensors.

      As he pushed the timber door open, he grunted. ‘I figure anyone breaking in is probably only in need of somewhere safe to spend the night.’

      ‘What if they trash the place?’

      He turned and stared at her. ‘Where are you from?’

      The unease returned and, until then, she hadn’t noticed it had dissipated. She stiffened her spine against it. ‘New York.’

      He nodded as if congratulating himself on his instincts. He looked like he wanted to say something else but finally settled on, ‘Larkville is nothing like the city.’

      ‘Clearly.’ She couldn’t help the mutter. Manhattan didn’t produce men like this one.

      She shut that thought down hard and followed him into the darkened room and stared around her as he switched on the lights. It was smaller than her own bathroom back home, but somehow he’d squeezed everything anyone would need for a comfortable night into it. A thick, masculine sofa draped in patchwork throws, a small two-person timber table that looked like it might once have been part of a forge, a rustic kitchenette. And upstairs, in what must once have been a hayloft…

      She moved quickly up the stairs.

      Bright, woven rugs crisscrossed a ridiculously comfortable-looking bed. The exhaustion of the past week suddenly made its presence felt.

      ‘They’re handcrafted by the people native to this area,’ he said. ‘Amazingly warm.’

      ‘They look it. They suit the room.’

      ‘This was the original barn on the back of the building back in 1885.’

      ‘It’s…’ So perfect. So amazing. ‘It looks very comfortable.’

      He looked down on her in the warm timber surrounds of the loft bedroom. The low roof line only served to make him seem more of a giant crowded into the tiny space.

      She regretted coming up here instantly.

      ‘It is. I lived here for months when my place was being renovated.’

      She was distracted by the thought that she’d be sleeping in Sheriff Jed Jackson’s bed tonight, but she stumbled out the first response that came to her. ‘But it’s so small….’

      His lips tightened immediately. ‘Size isn’t everything, Ms. Patterson.’

      What happened to ‘Ellie’? He turned and negotiated his descent quickly and she hurried after him, hating the fact that she was hurrying. She forced her feet to slow. ‘This will be very nice, Sheriff, thank you.’

      He turned and stared directly at her. ‘Jed. I’m not the sheriff when I’m out of uniform.’

      Great. And now she was imagining him out of uniform.

      Unfamiliar panic set in as her mind warmed to the topic. It was an instant flashback to her childhood when she’d struggled so hard to be mature and collected in the company of her parents’ sophisticated friends, and feared she’d failed miserably. Back then she had other methods of controlling her body; now, she just folded her manicured nails into her palm and concentrated on how they felt digging into her flesh.

      Hard enough to distract, soft enough not to scar.

      It did vaguely occur to her that maybe she’d just swapped one self-harm for another.

      ‘You haven’t asked the price,’ he said.

      ‘Price isn’t an issue.’ She cringed at how superior it sounded here—standing in a barn, out of context of the Patterson billions.

      His stare went on a tiny bit too long to be polite. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’

      Silence fell.

      Limped on.

      And then they both chose the exact same moment to break it.

      ‘I’ll get a fire started—’

      ‘I’ll just get my bags—’

      She opened the door to the pathway and the icy air from outside streamed in and stopped her dead.

      A hard body stepped past her. ‘I’ll get your bags, you stay in the warm.’

      His tone said he’d rather she froze to death, but his country courtesy wouldn’t let that happen.

      ‘But I—’

      He didn’t even bother turning around. ‘You can get the fire going if you want to be useful.’

      And then he closed the door in her face.

      Useful. The magic word. If there was one thing Eleanor Patterson was, it was useful. Capable. A doer. Nothing she couldn’t master.

      She took a deep breath, turned from the timber door just inches from her face and stared at the small, freestanding wood fire and the basket of timber next to it, releasing her breath slowly.

      Nothing she couldn’t master…

      The night air was as good as a cold shower.