The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

emotional and self-conscious teenaged ducklings into self-confident swans, when she heard the back door of the salon open, then bang shut. She barely had time to glance up before the sheriff came bursting through the curtain, looking like a fighting bull in search of the matador.

He checked when he saw Mary and said, “Ah, there you are,” in a calm voice that might have been convincing if his eyes hadn’t glittered so brightly, and if she hadn’t heard the sharp exhale of a breath through his nostrils.

She gave him a brief smile and went back to her sorting. “Did you think I’d left town?”

The sheriff folded his arms on his chest and strolled slowly toward her. “The thought crossed my mind.”

“Mine, too,” Mary said lightly, not looking up. Dismayed at the way her heart had quickened. “I couldn’t very well go today, though-it’s prom night.”

He nodded and said, “Ah.”

As if he truly understands, Mary thought, with a little tickle of surprise.

And why shouldn’t he? No doubt he remembers his prom. She felt a twinge of envy for the girl who had been his childhood sweetheart…and eventually his wife.

“You might have called me,” he said, from unexpectedly close behind her, in an undertone that was unnecessary in the empty shop. And perhaps for that reason seemed strangely intimate.

“I…didn’t think of it.” She felt too warm. Nervous, and hemmed in. He was too close…she could feel the heat from his body…smell his clean, just-shaved, just-showered smell.

She started to turn, needing to find more room to breathe, and when she did, a movement caught her eye-the curtain across the back entrance to the salon, twitching back into place, as if someone was watching furtively from behind it.

She halted and said, “Oh-” and the sheriff turned, too, following her startled gaze.

He made a gesture toward the curtain. “Come on out here, Susie Grace, she’s not gonna bite you.”

There was a pause…the curtain quivered, billowed, and then was snatched aside by a small hand to reveal a girl, possibly seven or eight but small for her age, dressed in jeans and a blue pullover with yellow butterflies appliqued on the front. She was wearing blue cowboy boots and a look that was half wary and half defiant. Her hair was pulled into two tight braids that hung stiffly to just below her shoulders. Hair the color of fire…copper pennies…autumn leaves.

Mary’s breath caught, and as the child moved reluctantly into the room, she felt the earth shudder under her feet. Thirty years fell away in an instant, and she found herself looking through a window into her own past-or was it a mirror? Except for the scars that puckered and crinkled the skin on the little girl’s neck and chin and one side of her face, Mary was gazing at herself…the child she had once been.

Chapter 9

“My daughter, Susan.”

It was the sound of Roan’s voice, clipped and cool rather than his usual throaty rumble, that finally pulled Mary’s gaze away from the child. Throwing him a guilty glance, she saw that his mouth had tightened, and she realized he must have completely misinterpreted the look on her face, realized he must think it was the child’s scars that had made her go shocked and still. Dismayed, she caught a quick breath to steady herself and returned the little girl’s sulky glare with a smile.

“Come on in here,” her father said impatiently. “This is Miss Mary. She’s not gonna bite you.”

“Hi, Susan,” Mary said, putting out her hand, “I’m very glad to meet you. Your dad has told-”

She was interrupted by the trilling of a cellular phone. Muttering under his breath, Roan snatched it from his belt and flipped it open. “Yeah.” He turned a shoulder to his audience of two, and then, after a brief pause, looked back at Mary, his eyes bright and intense. He gestured with the cell phone toward the salon’s back door. “I’m gonna have to…uh, I’ll just step outside for a minute, if that’s…”

“Yes, sure,” Mary murmured, tearing her gaze from his daughter’s face…and those coppery braids, so much like her own, once. “Go ahead.”

The sheriff vanished behind the swaying curtain, abandoning her to the company of his sullen and distrustful child. She listened to his footsteps thump through the storage room, and the outer door creak open, then click shut.

There was a brief, vibrant silence, and then Susie Grace’s small scarred chin lifted a notch. “Go ahead and stare if you want to,” she said valiantly. “Everybody does. I don’t care.”

Mary’s stomach gave a queer little lurch. “I wouldn’t do that, Susie Grace-it would be rude.”

“Well,” Susie Grace returned with a shrug, “you were.”

“I was looking at you. Because I just met you. That’s natural. But I think it’s natural that I would want to know what happened to give you those scars. Don’t you?”

Susie Grace wrinkled her nose and eyed her skeptically. “Don’t you know?”

“Maybe I heard something,” Mary said with an offhand shrug. “But I’d rather you told me.”

The child cocked her head and did a sort of half pirouette, the way Mary had seen children do when they felt self-conscious. “I got burned in a fire. So did my Grampa Boyd. So did my mom, but she died.” She threw Mary a resentful look over her shoulder. “I suppose you’re going to feel sorry for me now. Or else try to be really nice to me, so my dad will like you.”

Wow, Mary thought, and decided she might be forgiven a lie. “Actually, I don’t care whether your dad likes me or not,” she said with an airy toss of her head as she turned back to the work station she’d been setting up. “And why would I feel sorry for you? I was thinking what a lucky little girl you are.” She was startled to realize that last part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

And she was pleased when, watching from under her lashes, she saw the little girl’s expressive features register first surprise and then uncertainty. “What do you mean?”

Mary cleared her throat, which had grown unexpectedly tight. “Well, you’ve got a nice home, with a father and grampa who love and take care of you-I think that makes you very lucky.” She turned to study the little girl’s upturned face-drawn by curiosity, perhaps, she had cautiously crept close to her side. “Plus, you have gorgeous blue eyes, and I’ll bet you have a nice smile, too, when you want to use it.” Casually, she reached out to touch one coppery braid, then lifted and drew it over the child’s shoulder. “And, you have beautiful hair.”

Susie Grace jerked her head, flipping the braid back over her shoulder. “I hate my hair.”

Unperturbed, Mary laughed softly. “I used to have to wear my hair in pigtails when I was a little girl.”

“You did?” Susie Grace was doing the suspicious, wrinkled-up-nose thing again.

“Yeah-I hated them, too.”

Susie Grace giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth and ducking her head the way little girls do when they share delicious secrets with each other, and Mary shivered inside with something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Sheer delight.

Roan wasn’t in the best of moods when he finished his call and returned the cell phone to his belt. The U.S. Marshal’s Office, apparently overwhelmed and in a state of reorganization due to some personnel shortages and recent scandals, still hadn’t been able to locate either a case file for Mary Owen, or the marshal assigned to her case. Never thrilled to be dealing with federal bureaucracy at the best of times, right now his inability to make any headway in solving the mystery of his murder suspect’s identity had him ready to spit bullets.

He also wasn’t happy about the way that particular murder suspect had been occupying his mind of late…her face, those shimmering green-gold eyes coming into his thoughts in the dark of night when he lay alone in the bed he’d shared with Erin. It had been a long time since he’d shared his bed with a woman-any woman. He hoped that was all this was about. Guilt…the notion that he was betraying his wife. Lust…the natural awareness a man has for an attractive woman. Those he could handle.

He for sure wasn’t happy, though, about the pain that had knifed through his belly this morning and turned his blood to ice and his heart to stone when he’d arrived at her house to pick her up and found her gone.

All those things were on his mind as he made his way back through the storeroom, flicked aside the curtain and