The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

stepped into the powder-pink salon. All that, plus a niggling measure of guilt at having left his murder suspect to babysit Susie Grace, who Lord knew didn’t care for strangers at the best of times, and in the mood she was in this morning…

He halted. His jaw went slack and that and every other intelligent thought flew right out of his head.

Momentum had carried him several long strides into the salon before his brain registered what he was seeing: Susie Grace, his ornery tomboy daughter, sitting high in one of Mary’s chairs with a pink drape around her neck. She had her eyes all squinched up, closed tight, and most of what had been her long braids was lying in a copper- colored pile at Mary’s feet.

He must have made some sound, because although she didn’t open her eyes, Susie Grace’s face lit up with a grin. “Hi, Dad.”

He cleared his throat, stalling while he collected his wits-though his first attempt at speech didn’t show much evidence of success in that respect. “Uh…what’s goin’ on? What’ve you guys been up to?” The answer to which was pretty damned obvious, even to a man not much accustomed to the mysteries of beauty salons.

“I’m getting my hair cut,” said Susie Grace.

“I can see that,” said Roan, nodding. “How come your eyes are shut?”

“Mary told me to keep them closed ’til she’s done. But it’s okay, ’cause I’m scared to look anyway.” She gave a theatrical shiver.

Mary glanced at him, pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and went on with what she was doing. Roan winced as he watched another wet hank of red hair tumble to the floor.

“I’m giving her a layered cut,” Mary explained. “When it’s dry it’s going to feather around her face and neck, see?” She managed, with subtle motions of her hands and the scissors, to show him what she wouldn’t say aloud: And it will hide and soften the effect of the scars. “And,” she added, tilting Susie Grace’s head in order to reach a new spot, “it should be short enough so it won’t get in her way.”

“Yeah, ’cause I don’t like hair in my face,” said Susie Grace, scrunching up her face again in disgust.

Mary laid the scissors aside and picked up a blow dryer. She turned it on and blew away the stray locks of hair that had fallen on Susie Grace’s face and on the shoulders of the pink drape. Then Roan watched, with emotions he couldn’t name quivering in his stomach, while hands that seemed almost magical tousled and fluffed and coaxed the damp strands that remained into soft shining waves that swung and floated…then settled like the petals of a flower against the puckered, silvery skin that marred his little girl’s cheek and neck.

Mary turned off the dryer, laid it aside, then turned the chair to face the mirror. “Open your eyes, Susie Grace.”

Roan held his breath. Susie Grace slowly opened her eyes. She looked at herself for what seemed like forever…with absolutely no expression on her face, in a silence so complete he wondered why they all couldn’t hear his heart pounding.

Then she stuck out her lower lip. “I look like a girl.”

“A very pretty girl,” Mary said softly.

Susie Grace, being…well, Susie Grace, stubbornly shook her head. But her eyes were glowing, and her face…

It was suddenly too much. Roan pivoted sharply away to hide the emotions that must have been visible on his face…coughed to ease the ache in his throat…rubbed at the back of his neck where it burned with the embarrassment of so much emotion.

“Don’t you like it, Dad?”

The doubt and disappointment in her voice tore at him. He didn’t know how he managed to come up with a smile before he turned back to her, but he did. “Yeah, peanut, of course I like it. You look real pretty. You look-” he had to cough again to get the words through his throat “-just like your mother.”

He hurled one desperate look at Mary, then yanked his sunglasses out of his pocket and shoved them onto his face. Damned if he was going to let his murder suspect catch him with tears in his eyes.

But where did he go from here? His shocked mind was casting wildly about for an answer to that when he was saved, literally, by the bell-the one on the salon’s front door. It jangled merrily as several high-school girls burst in, bringing with them the cool spring air and all the noise and laughter and brightness only a bunch of teenage girls can.

They turned the volume down considerably when they saw the sheriff standing there.

To put them at ease Roan nodded and smiled and said affably, “Mornin’, ladies.”

Having got his feet back square on the ground again, he turned to his daughter and the woman who’d knocked them out from under him in the first place. He held out his hand to Susie Grace, who ignored it and hopped down from the chair without help, brushing at her face and shaking her head to feel the way her hair moved on her neck. Her eyes were shining like it was Christmas morning.

“We’d best be getting on,” he said gruffly, before he could get choked up again. “Looks like Miss Mary needs to get to work.” He looked at her, glad he had the sunglasses to hide behind. “How much do I owe you?”

She made a startled, distracted gesture. “Oh-just call it even for the gas.” A smile flickered, then quickly died. She didn’t have the benefit of dark glasses like he did; behind the transparent lenses her eyes seemed uncommonly bright.

“We’re going horseback riding,” Susie Grace announced, oblivious to rampaging adult emotions. Roan saw her glance warily at the high-school girls, but at least she didn’t try to hide behind his legs, as she usually did. Instead, she reached for Mary’s hand and said shyly, “You could come with us.”

He wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer. He thought she must be more than a little bit distracted, though, because she sort of strolled along beside them as they walked outside, letting Susie Grace lead her by the hand.

So there they were-his daughter holding Mary’s hand on one side and his on the other-like one little happy family. He didn’t know what to feel about that picture-whether it made him happy, or angry, or sad, or just confused as hell.

When they were outside in the alley, Susie Grace tried again, wheedling the way she did when she was trying to get her way and knew it wasn’t going to happen. “Come with us? Please?”

Mary gave a little gurgle of a laugh. “Oh, honey, I can’t-I have a lot of other girls’ hair to fix today.” She shot Roan a look with more than laughter in her eyes, the kind of look that passes between a man and a woman when they share secret thoughts without saying a word-and he knew then she was remembering what she’d told him about her feelings about horses.

And he didn’t know how to feel about that, either.

“We’ll be back in time to take you home,” he said, bringing himself back to earth and a warning note into his tone.

She nodded and wrapped her arms across her waist. Her smile was merely wry now. “No rush-I’m sure I’ll be here until late.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Susie Grace said hopefully, looking from one grownup to the other and back again, fidgeting in the natural way of little kids, now that they were away from curious eyes. “Nobody works Sunday, right? You could come with us tomorrow! Right, Dad? Can she come?”

“Well, I don’t-” Mary sucked in a breath and shot Roan a look of pure panic, and once again he knew right away what she was thinking.

“Not horseback riding,” he assured her dryly. “Shopping.”

“We’re going to the mall in Bozeman to buy me clothes ’cause I outgrowed all my old ones,” Susie Grace explained, hopping excitedly. “Can she come with us, Dad? Please?”

Roan looked at Mary, and she looked back at him, and her eyes seemed to shimmer in the soft spring sunlight. The same sun touched her cheeks with a warm ivory glow, and her lips slowly parted and grew lush…and ripe, and he swore he could see a pulse beating in her long, slender throat. Standing right there in that alley he could feel his own pulse thumping low down in his belly, where a ball of heat had formed and was growing hotter and heavier by the second, making him feel scorched from his scalp to his toes.

He for damn sure knew how he felt about that, and he was not so sure he was going to be able to handle it after all.

Because what he felt was scared to death.