Dalton's Undoing. RaeAnne Thayne

muttered.

      “I am relaxed.” He lifted his chin and tried for a cool look that came out looking more like a constipated rabbit.

      Seth sighed and closed his door again as he watched the deputy climb out of the vehicle. Before he even saw her face, he knew by the curvy shape that the officer had to be Polly Jardine, the only female deputy in the small sheriff’s department.

      She dimpled at him, looking not much different than she had in high school—cute and perky and worlds away from his idea of an officer of the law. Though she still looked like she should be shaking her pom-poms at a Friday night football game, he knew she was a tough and dedicated cop.

      He imagined she inspired more than a few naughty fantasies around town involving those handcuffs dangling from her belt. But since her husband was linebacker-huge and also on the sheriff’s department—and they were crazy about each other—those fantasies would only ever be that.

      “Hey Seth. I thought that was your car. Man! What happened? You take the turn a little too fast?”

      His gaze shifted quickly to the boy inside the truck then quickly back to Polly, hoping she hadn’t noticed. He found himself strangely reluctant to throw Cole Boyer into the system.

      “Something like that,” he murmured.

      She followed his gaze to the boy and speculation suddenly narrowed her eyes. “You sure that’s the whole story?”

      He leaned a hip against the truck, tilted his head and gave her a slow smile. “Would I lie to an officer of the law, darlin’?”

      “Six ways from Sunday, darlin’.” Though her words were tart, she smiled in a way that told him she remembered with fondness the few times they’d fooled around under the bleachers before Mitch Jardine moved into town and she had eyes for no one else. “But it’s your car. If that’s the way you want to play this, I won’t argue with you.”

      “Thanks, Pol. I owe you.”

      “That’s the new principal’s kid, isn’t it?”

      He nodded.

      “We’ve had a few run-ins with him in the few months they’ve been in town,” she said. “Nothing big, breaking curfew, that kind of thing. You sure letting him off is the right thing to do for him? Today a joyride, tomorrow a bank robbery.”

      He didn’t know anything except he couldn’t bring himself to turn him in.

      “For now.”

      “Let me know if you change your mind. I’m supposed to file an accident report but I’ll just pretend I didn’t see anything.”

      He nodded and waved goodbye then climbed into the truck. Cole Boyer watched him, his green eyes wary. “Am I going to jail?”

      “No. Not today, anyway.”

      “Friggin’ A!”

      “Don’t be so quick with the celebration there,” he warned. “A week or two in juvie is probably going to look pretty damn good by the time your mother and grandfather get through with you. And that doesn’t even take into account what you’ll have to do to even the score with me.”

      She was late. As usual.

      In one motion, Jenny Boyer shoved on slingbacks and shrugged into her favorite brocade jacket.

      “Listen to Grandpa while I’m gone, okay?” she said, head tilted while she thrust a pair of conservative gold hoops into her ears.

      “I always do.” Morgan, her nine-year-old, going on fifty, sniffed just like a society matron finding something undesirable in her tea. “Cole is the one who doesn’t like authority figures.”

      Didn’t she just know it? Jenny sighed. “Well, make sure he listens to Grandpa, too.”

      Morgan folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I’ll try, but I don’t think he’ll pay attention to either me or Grandpa.”

      Probably not, she conceded. Nobody seemed to be able to get through to Cole. She’d thought moving to Idaho to live with her father would help stabilize her son, at least get him away from the undesirable elements in Seattle who were leading him into all kinds of trouble.

      She had hoped his grandfather would give the boy the male role model he had lost with his own father’s desertion. So much for that. Though Jason tried, Cole was so angry and bitter at the world—more furious with her now for uprooting him from his friends and moving him to this backwater than he was with his father for moving to another continent.

      She glanced at her watch and groaned. The school board meeting started in ten minutes and she was scheduled to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining her efforts to raise the elementary school’s performance on standardized testing. This was her first big meeting with the school board and she couldn’t afford to blow it.

      The therapist she’d gone to after the divorce suggested Jenny’s chronic tardiness indicated some form of passive aggression, her way of governing a life that often felt beyond her control.

      Jenny just figured she was too busy chasing after her hundreds of constantly spinning plates.

      “I’ve got to run, baby. I’ll be home before you go to sleep, I promise.” She kissed her on the forehead, wondering as she headed out of her room if she had time to hurry down to the basement to say goodbye to Cole. No, she decided. Besides her time crunch, any conversation between them these days ended in a fight and she wasn’t sure she was up for another one tonight.

      “Bye, Dad,” she called down the hall as she grabbed her laptop case and her purse. “Thanks for watching them!”

      “Don’t worry about a thing.” Jason Chambers appeared in the doorway, wearing his favorite Ducks Unlimited sweater and jeans that made him look far younger than his sixty-five years. “Give ’em hell.”

      She mustered a distracted smile, grateful all over again that they’d been able to move past their complicated, stiff relationship of the past and find some measure of peace when she moved to Pine Gulch.

      Juggling her bags and her keys, she yanked open the door and rushed out, then gave a shriek when she collided with a solid, warm male.

      With a little gasp, Jenny righted herself, registering the muscles in that hard frame that seemed as immovable as the Tetons. “I’m sorry! I didn’t see you.”

      She knew who he was, of course. What woman in Pine Gulch didn’t? With that slow, sexy smile and those brilliant blue eyes that seemed to see right into a woman’s psyche to all her deepest desires, Seth Dalton was a difficult man to overlook.

      Not that she didn’t try her best. The youngest Dalton was exactly the kind of man she tried to avoid at all cost. She’d had more than enough, thank you very much, of smooth charmers who swept a woman off her feet with flowers and champagne only to leave her dangling there, hanging by her fingernails when they decide young French pastries are more to their taste.

      What earthly reason would Dalton have for showing up at her doorstep? He had no children at her school, he was years past his own education and somehow she couldn’t picture him as the type to bake cookies for the PTA fundraiser.

      She couldn’t think of anything else that would bring him to her door and the clock was ticking.

      “May I help you, Mr. Dalton?”

      Surprise flickered in those eyes for just a moment, as if he hadn’t expected her to know his name. “Just making a delivery.”

      She frowned, impatient and confused, as he reached around the door out of her view, tugging something forward. No something, someone—someone with a sullen scowl, a baggy sweatshirt and a chip the size of Idaho on his narrow shoulders.

      “Cole!”

      Beneath her son’s customary sulky defiance, she thought she saw something else beneath the attitude, something nervous