105
MARGARET MARON
In the small hours of Saturday morning, Detective
Mayleen Richards drove through the deserted streets
of Dobbs. The only other person out at that time was a
town police officer, who gave her a friendly wave from
his cruiser that indicated he’d be glad to share a cup
of coffee from his Thermos and kill some boring time.
Another night and she might have. Tonight though, she
merely waved back and continued on to her apartment,
a one-bedroom over a garage on the outskirts of Dobbs
where town and suburbs merged.
The elderly couple who lived in the main house spent
their winters in Florida and were glad to have a sheriff ’s
deputy there to keep an eye on things. Richards was
glad for the privacy their absence gave her. Even when
the owners were in residence, they went to bed early
and seemed singularly uninterested in their tenant’s ir-
regular comings and goings.
Not that there had been anything very irregular about
her personal life before this. She pulled her shifts. She
attended a Spanish language course two nights a week
out at Colleton Community College. She visited her
family down in Black Creek almost every weekend. She
harbored no regrets for ditching either that dull com-
puter programming job out at the Research Triangle
nor the equally dull marriage to her highschool sweet-
heart who had achieved his life’s goal when he traded
farm life for a desk job. Except for fancying herself in
love with Major Bryant, law enforcement had absorbed
and satisfied her.
Richards could smile to herself now and see that re-
cent adolescent crush for what it was—attraction to an
alpha male, generated by proximity and nothing more
106
HARD ROW
than the needs of a healthy body that had slept alone for
way too long.
She coasted to a stop beside a shiny gray pickup with
an extended crew cab and cut the ignition, then hurried
up the wooden steps that led to a deck and to the man
who waited inside.
“I thought you’d be gone,” she said, absurdly happy
that her prickly reaction to his first overtures had not
sent him away.
“No.” He carefully unzipped her jacket and eased the
soft pink sweater over her head, then buried his face in
the waves of her dark red hair as his hands unhooked
her bra.
