The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

Joy’s legs had stopped shaking, pretty much. Now she was pacing back and forth through the rooms of her house, talking on the phone and making wild, out-of-sync gestures with her free hand like a mishandled marionette.

“I have to go to her,” she said, sniffling into the phone. “She needs me. Oh, Scott…poor Yancy.”

“You don’t need to be running off up to Montana and getting into the middle of this,” her husband said calmly but firmly. “There’s nothing you can do anyway, except make things worse.”

“I can be there. She shouldn’t be alone through something like this.”

“What makes you think she’s alone? It’s been ten years, honey, she’s probably married, with a family of her own.”

Joy was silent for a moment, brushing away tears. Then she said in a low, choked voice, “She didn’t do it-shoot that senator’s son. You know that-she couldn’t have. Yancy couldn’t kill anyone.”

There was a soft exhalation, a pause, and then, “I know.”

“I have to do something. Please-I can be on a plane by-”

“Joy, absolutely not. I mean it. What am I gonna have to do, handcuff you to the bathroom plumbing again?”

Joy gave a watery squeak of laughter and a grudging sniff. “Yeah, look how well that worked the last time you tried it.” But she’d heard the genuine concern in her husband’s voice. They were both remembering what had happened last time she’d been hell-bent on rescuing Yancy.

“Look, dammit-” Joy winced. It wasn’t like her patient teddy-bear husband to shout. “What do you think you’re gonna do if Junior DelRey comes for her? Jump in front of a bullet?”

Her heart gave a sickening lurch. “Junior? But-I thought he was in prison.”

“Oh, no. His father and uncle got life-I think they both died in prison. Diego DelRey was sent up as accessory. He’s been out for…I guess it’d be two years, now.” Scott’s voice was grim.

“Oh God…if he sees that news broadcast-Scott, you have to do something!”

“Yeah.” There was another, gustier exhalation. “Okay, look, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try and get hold of the sheriff up there-what was the name of the place again?”

“Hartsville,” Joy said with a relieved sniffle. “Hart County, Montana.”

Roan argued with himself as he drove into town. Not out loud-he wasn’t that crazy-although at the rate he was going, he figured that was coming, it was only a matter of time. Right now, thankfully, there was still a rational, grown-up part of him that demanded to know what the hell the rest of him thought he was doing.

It was way too late to try to pretend he hadn’t compromised his objectivity where Miss Mary Owen-or Yancy, or whatever the hell her name was-was concerned.

Much harder to admit he might be in over his head.

Easy enough to admit learning the truth about his mystery woman had hit him hard. What man wouldn’t be ticked off to find out the woman he was teetering on the brink of falling in love with, to the point where he’d convinced himself she wasn’t a murderer, had been in bed-literally-with the South American mob? He could admit to being mad as hell, feeling like he’d been conned, made a damn fool of.

It was harder to admit how much it hurt.

He’d trusted her, dammit-ironic, too, when he considered how he’d started out trying to get her to trust him. Instead, he’d come to trust and believe in her innocence enough to introduce his daughter to her, and even, God help him, include her on a family outing. Clearly, he had lost his mind.

Temporarily, he told himself grimly as he jerked the SUV to a stop in front of Queenie Schultz’s little clapboard house. Which was something he’d almost begun to look forward to, these past few mornings…pulling up, tapping the horn, then watching Mary emerge from the house like a little brown mouse from its hole. And he’d be smiling to himself, enjoying the secret knowledge that the mouse was really an enchantress in disguise. Enchantress? What the hell was that? Now I’m weaving fairy-tale fantasies about my murder suspect?

He sat staring at the house, girding himself. He told himself he was through being blinded by a pair of green- gold eyes and that he was seeing everything clearly now. He told himself this morning’s development was the wake-up call he needed to get himself back on track, remember who and what he was and get back to doing the job the people of Heartbreak County paid him to do. He told himself he was damn lucky he’d come to his senses when he had.

He stared at the house and the front porch and the lilac bush and told himself he wasn’t seeing her there, that breath-stopping smile and those shimmering eyes lifted to his, and hearing his little girl’s laughter. He told himself his heart wasn’t thumping like a jackhammer inside his chest.

“Time to quite actin’ like a lunatic and start actin’ like a sheriff,” he growled to himself as he opened the door and reached for his Stetson.

She answered the door wearing a flannel bathrobe, an ugly blue and purple plaid the color of bruises. She wasn’t wearing her glasses-had they been part of the lie, too, he wondered? Without them her eyes had a dazed, unfocused look, and there was a purplish-blue smudge, like a thumbprint, below each one. Her skin had the almost translucent quality he’d noticed that first night, with only the faintest lingering hint of the bruises Jason had given her, and no trace at all of a blush. Her hair was loose and tousled, as if she’d just gotten out of bed. It was the first time he’d seen it that way, tumbled down around her shoulders, and he couldn’t help but notice it was longer and thicker than he’d thought it would be, and had a little bit of a tendency to curl after all.

“It’s Monday-the shop is closed,” she said, gathering a handful of her hair and raking it back. She lifted her chin and her eyes darkened and her face closed up like a fortress preparing for battle. “I won’t be needing a ride.”

“I didn’t come to give you one,” Roan said between clenched teeth. He opened the screen door and moved past her into the house. He pitched his hat onto the back of the sofa, then turned and arrowed a look at her. “Is it true?”

It wasn’t what he’d meant to say-at least, not like that, with his voice sounding like a rusty gate hinge. But it was out, now; there was nothing he could do but wait for her answer.

He needed the answer, dammit. Which was maybe why he did what he did when she seemed about to brush past him without giving him one. He grabbed her arm. Not acting like a sheriff, for sure, and maybe not a lunatic, either. Maybe just a man caught up in an emotional confrontation with a woman, and there was no use kidding himself this had anything to do with the job. Not any longer.

She flicked a glance down at his hand, then lashed it back at him, and he swore he could feel the burn of that look on his skin. He didn’t fold, just stared back at her, his own eyes on fire in their sockets.

“I just got up,” she said very softly. “I was going to get some coffee. Do you mind?”

“Hell with the damn coffee! The story on the news this morning-is it true?”

There was a long pause. His heart knocked against his ribs, and he could feel his pulse in his fingers where they circled the sleeve of her robe.

“Some of it.” She spoke as if her lips were made of glass.

The smile he gave her felt no less rigid. It cramped the muscles in his jaws. He said with exaggerated patience, “Well, let’s start with your name. I seem to recall you swore to me it was Mary. So who is Yancy? Huh? Now what’s the truth?”

“Roan…”

The sound of his name coming so softly from her mouth hit him like a blow. He felt sick. It shamed him to realize he’d tightened his grip on her arm, but he couldn’t seem to let go. “Oh, well, hell-I forgot. What good does it do me to ask you for the truth? How am I even supposed to know what the truth is, coming from you? ‘My name is Mary,’ you told me, and you didn’t kill Jason. Since you lied about the one-”

She gave a sharp, angry gasp, and he felt the muscles in her arm go rigid. “I didn’t lie. My name is Mary. Mary Yancy.” Her chin came up, en garde, once again ready for battle. “Yancy Lavigne was my professional name.”

But he was too angry to absorb such a simple explanation, and instead plowed on. “Yeah, and I was right about you being a city girl, wasn’t I? That story you told me-your father, the church-how does that fit with your New York City glamour-girl-”

“That was true-every bit of it.” Her eyes had darkened, but he couldn’t let himself acknowledge the pain in them. If he did, the anger would go out of him like air from a leaky life raft, and right now it was the only thing