years, his home both a refuge and a prison since Emily’s death. He’d found a certain familiar comfort in his loneliness, Emily’s absence so powerful it became a tangible thing he could hold on to when the nights were dark and long. He hadn’t let anyone intrude on his solitude in a long time.
Hannah would change that. How could she not?
Hannah released a long, deep breath and looked up at them. “Okay.”
Riley felt as if the ground was crumbling beneath his feet.
“Let’s do it,” she said, her chin high. “Let’s go to Canyon Creek.”
Chapter Four
“Joe shouldn’t have dragged you out of bed to do this.” Hannah took the blanket Jane Garrison handed her, feeling terrible about putting a stranger-a pregnant stranger-through so much trouble.
“I wasn’t asleep. I’m not used to my husband being called to Jackson in the middle of the night.” Jane’s expression was a mixture of ruefulness and besottedness. Clearly, she was madly in love with Canyon Creek’s Chief of Police.
“I guess it’s usually quiet around here, huh?” Hannah had dozed a bit on the drive from Jackson, drained from the last eventful hours, but she’d awakened long enough to see that Riley Patterson’s small ranch house was located smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming. He had assured her there was a town a few miles to the east, with stoplights and everything, but they were clearly in ranch country, where the closest neighbors-the Garrisons, as it turned out-were six miles down a narrow one-lane road.
“Quiet?” Jane’s lips quirked. “Mostly, yes. But we do have our moments, now and then.” She crossed to the corner, where an old-fashioned wood stove sat silent and cold, and started to pick up pieces of firewood from a nearby bin.
“Let me do that.” Hannah quickly intervened.
“You have a concussion,” Jane protested.
“And you’re pregnant,” Hannah countered firmly.
Jane gave her an exasperated look. “It’s not a disease.”
Hannah laughed. Jane’s lips curved and she finally gave into laughter as well.
“Joe treats me like I’m suddenly made of glass when he knows damned well I’m tough as old leather,” Jane complained as she opened the door to the stove so Hannah could throw some wood inside. “I’ve lived through the Wyoming winter for two years now. Having a baby’s nothing compared to that.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s nothing.” Hannah put the last piece of wood on the fire and stepped back. “How does this thing work? We’re more into air-conditioning where I live.”
Jane took over lighting the wood stove. “You’re from Alabama?”
Hannah sat on the end of the bed, watching Jane’s deft hands strike a match to the kindling she’d piled atop the stack of wood inside the iron stove’s belly. “Yeah. It’s a little town called Gossamer Ridge, up in northeast Alabama. It’s pretty small. My family owns a few hundred acres on Gossamer Lake. We run a marina and fishing camp there. Most of my brothers and I work there in some capacity.”
“You have a lot of brothers?” Jane stepped back from the stove, holding her hands out to warm them from the radiant heat.
“Six. I’m the youngest and the only girl.”
“Wow. Six brothers.” Jane settled carefully in a rocker next to the bed, rubbing her hand over her round belly. “I’m an only child. Joe had a brother, but he died.” For a second, Jane’s expression grew bleak, her eyes dark with pain. She took a deep breath and seemed to physically shake off the sadness. “Riley’s an only child, too. It can be lonely.”
“He seems lonely.” Hannah kicked herself mentally the second the words spilled from her lips. The last thing she should be doing was psychoanalyzing the man who’d made himself her guardian angel. She should just accept his offer of protection for what it was and try not to get any more involved.
She’d already made the mistake of falling for a guy who was hung up on another woman and lived to regret it. She had no intention of making the same mistake again.
But Jane wasn’t ready to drop the subject, apparently. “He’s a complicated guy.”
“I know about his wife’s death.” And understood his thirst for justice better than he might have imagined. Her own brother, J.D., whose wife had been murdered several years ago, was still waiting for justice as well.
She wondered if either man would get what they wanted.
Jane gave her a sidelong look. “I didn’t know Emily. She had died about a year before I met Joe. He tells me Riley used to be very different. Clowning around, always the one to crack a joke-” She stopped herself. “Like I said, complicated.”
Hannah resisted the temptation to push for more information. She was here for only a few more days, and her focus needed to be on remembering the lost details of her ordeal with the fake cop, not on Riley Patterson’s tragic past.
She quickly changed the subject. “Is this your first child?”
“Yeah.” Jane rubbed her belly. “Joe keeps talking about lots of kids. I told him he can carry the rest of them.”
Hannah grinned, deciding she liked Jane Garrison. She wasn’t what you’d call pretty, exactly, with her freckle- spotted face and unruly brown curls, but her emerald eyes were full of life and laughter, and when she smiled, Hannah couldn’t help smiling back.
“I missed my mother’s pregnancies, being the youngest. But my brothers tell me stories that would curl your hair.”
Jane chuckled. “Scooter here has been pretty good for most of the pregnancy, but now that I’m nearing the goal line, he’s started kicking up a storm-”
“And you love it.”
Riley’s deep voice from the doorway drew Hannah’s gaze. She felt suddenly, intensely aware of him as he entered the room, his boots thumping against the hardwood floor with each step. He’d shed the leather jacket and dress shirt for a dark-blue T-shirt. A sizzle of pure attraction shot through Hannah’s body, settling low in her belly. It simmered there, spreading warmth through her veins.
She tamped it down ruthlessly. The last time she’d let her heart and hormones lead her head, she’d ended up heartbroken and humiliated.
“Joe’s on the phone with Jim Tanner,” Riley told Jane, holding out his hand to her. “He said to round you up and head you in the direction of the front door. You’re supposed to be resting like a good mama-to-be.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “See what I have to put up with?” But she let Riley help her from the rocking chair, and the look of affection she gave him when he ruffled her curls made Hannah smile. Jane waggled her fingers at Hannah. “Call if you need anything. Riley has our number.”
“I will,” Hannah agreed, though she didn’t plan on imposing on the Garrisons or Riley if she could avoid it.
While Riley walked to the front of the house with Jane, Hannah pulled her suitcase onto the bed and started unpacking. The closet across from the bed was empty, save for a couple of extra blankets piled atop a high shelf. Hannah filled several of the bare clothes hangers with her sparse collection of blouses and sweaters. Jeans, T-shirts and underwear went into the small chest of drawers by the door.
Her toiletries she kept in the bag she’d packed them in, since she’d be sharing the house’s only bathroom with Riley. She couldn’t quite bring herself to store her deodorant next to his on the sink counter.
Riley tapped on the open door, making her jump. “Do you have everything you need?”
She looked up to find him leaning against the door frame, his arms folded over his chest. His direct gaze made the skin on the back of her neck prickle, but she refused to look away. If they were going to be sharing this house for the next few days, she was going to have to control her rattled nerves. Now was as good a time to start as any.
“I’m taking the rest of the week off from work,” he told her, pushing away from the door and walking farther into the room. His broad shoulders and muscle-corded frame seemed to crowd the room, leaving Hannah feeling small and vulnerable. She stood up, thinking it would put them on more equal footing, but rising only brought her
