Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

was left behind with the back of her hand. Watching her, his mouth watered as though he were beholding a banquet table.

Her eyes came up to meet his. “So,” she said, unsmiling, “come with me.”

Oh, hell. J.J. muttered something even he couldn’t make out and sat back in his chair, shaking his head.

Her eyes took on a gleam. “What, don’t tell me you don’t know how to ride.”

“I’ve ridden. Sure I have. I was on a horse-” He gave up trying to hold on to his masculine pride and let out a breath and with it a huff of laughter. “Once-when I was about six. Never again.”

“Why not? What happened?” Her head tilted, eyes bright and curious.

He shrugged. Confession of his childhood humiliations didn’t extend that far.

“You fell off? Hey, it happens. You’re just supposed to get right back on.”

His smile slipped sideways. “Ah, well…we weren’t the ridin’ kind of family, I guess.”

“I’m sorry.” She said it softly, as if he’d confessed to having some tragic illness. Then sighed and picked up her glass of milk. “Damn. There goes my John Wayne fantasy.”

He snorted, and her eyes slid toward him, hooded and unreadable. Then, lashes lowered, she murmured, “Well, that’s okay. Sage can go with me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Her eyes were wide open again, innocent as a babe’s.

For the life of him, he couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer. For one thing, he couldn’t very well tell her he was envisioning some wild action movie scenario wherein a helicopter hovers over the meadow where Rachel is cantering in slow-mo through the wildflowers, and black-garbed ninja-types stream down the ladders, snatch her up and fly away.

Maybe he couldn’t tell her why, but he knew he didn’t want to let her out of his sight.

He said, “If anybody goes with you, it’s going to be me.”

Now demurely nibbling a strawberry, Rachel said, “Jethro, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you sounded jealous.”

He made a growling sound deep in his throat, shoved back his chair and got up and went back in the house. High time he got out of there, he thought, because he obviously needed to get his emotions and his fantasies under control. First, because there was this crazy question that insisted on flashing through his mind: Is she flirting with me? Which he knew was ridiculous, and nothing more than some wishful thinking on his part.

Then, there was the fact that she was right-he was behaving like a jealous man. And he simply was not the jealous type. Never had been, never would be.

Except…there was this voice arguing, way down deep inside his head: Maybe you just never met a woman you thought was worth being jealous about.

He just knew he couldn’t stomach the thought of Rachel going riding with that kid, Sage. Or, the thought of the two of them galloping through the meadow full of wildflowers, matching black braids bouncing and blowing in the wind.

Chapter 9

Rachel waited for the sound of the door closing before she let out a slow and careful breath. Her heart was beating fast. She felt exhilarated. Excited. Even a little bit defiant. Why? Because she’d more than held her own against Sheriff Jethro J. Fox, even-be truthful, Rachel-flirted a little? And it had felt good?

Oh, how good it felt!

I’m happy, she thought. I could…I wish I could…stay here.

Of course, there was still the small matter of her grandfather to deal with, and why she’d been summoned, and what sort of inheritance she was supposed to claim and whether the man was alive or dead, for that matter. No one seemed to want to give her a definite answer to that question. But she was happy, maybe just to feel safe. And free. Free to go for a walk, if she wanted to. As much as she hated to admit it, J.J. was right about the fact that her body probably wasn’t ready to tolerate an activity like horseback riding, but he couldn’t object to a walk. Even in hospitals, she thought, they encourage patients-which she certainly was not!-to walk.

She finished off the glass of milk, and then, after peeking down the front of her blouse to make sure the absorbent pads inside her nursing bra were in place, scooped up the baby monitor and went into the house to find Josie.

She found her in the kitchen cleaning up the breakfast dishes, and felt a jolt of shame as she realized she could easily have brought her own dishes in with her, saving the housekeeper the trip out to get them. I’m sorry, Gran, I know you taught me better. I’ve gotten spoiled, living with Nicholas Delacorte these past three years. I’ll do better.

But Josie would have no part of her apology, and in fact even before Rachel could ask, offered to keep the baby monitor so Rachel could go for a walk.

“Oh, would you? Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?” And just like that, those crazy hormone-fed emotions were flooding her again-fear at the thought of leaving her baby, yearning to get out in the morning if only for an hour, gratitude toward Josie for making it possible. She touched away a tear, then laughed at it and cleared her throat. “I, um…I just fed him-he’s sleeping. He should be okay for an hour. I just want to…go out…to see-”

Josie hugged her, laughing. “Of course, he’ll be okay, and no, I don’t mind. I’ll be right down there making beds anyway. You go on-take your time. Enjoy this beautiful morning.”

Rachel laughed, too, and wiped away what remained of the tears. She put the baby monitor on the kitchen countertop, turned to give Josie another hug, then almost danced out of the kitchen, through the cavernous dining room, cozy living room and out the front door. She paused for a moment at the top of the flagstone steps to consider how Josie would call her if she needed her when she still didn’t have a cell phone. She really did need to ask J.J. about getting one.

The thought flashed through her mind-just a hint of a thought-that maybe she should have a phone in case she needed to call for help, too. She dismissed it, partly because the idea of needing help, the thought of Carlos and his thugs being able to get to her here in this lovely place seemed so remote, and partly because J.J. was being so ridiculously paranoid and overprotective. She’d been paranoid herself for such a long time, and now that she was free, she was definitely not going to allow anyone to smother her, ever again.

She started off down the lane, and was both startled and a little uneasy, at first, when Moonshine hauled herself up out of the bed she’d made for herself in the shade of the evergreen trees and came to amble along at her heels. Then she decided it was kind of sweet, the notion of having a dog to protect her-not at all suffocating, as it would probably have been if J.J. had insisted on coming along.

“Okay,” she told the dog, “you can come-as long as you don’t tell J.J. on me. Deal?” And she was surprised and oddly touched when the dog shuffled up beside her and bumped her head under her hand, as if she’d understood. As she obliged the dog with a pat on her wrinkled forehead, she laughed a little at the peculiar sensation she felt in the vicinity of her heart. Maybe, she decided, dogs weren’t so bad after all.

She made her way quickly through the maze of flower and rose beds, emerging onto the stretch of the lane that ran along the meadow. She paused at the barbed wire fence to watch the horses grazing in the new spring grass, then decided there was no reason she couldn’t go into the meadow and see the horses up close.

She soon discovered that getting through a barbed wire fence was trickier than it looked, and was very glad she hadn’t had to do it for the first time in front of witnesses. Particularly Sheriff J. J. Fox.

“You,” she said to Moonshine, who was sitting on her haunches in the meadow grass, watching her with tongue hanging out, “had better not be laughing.” Moonshine made no comment.

Flushed and exhilarated, Rachel dusted her hands and set out toward the horses, who by now had seen her