The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

with than some of the other stuff rattling around inside him.

Stubborn woman, he thought, and wouldn’t let himself think about the anguish, courage and vulnerability that were there in her voice too.

Wouldn’t let himself think what a high-caliber slug would have done to her head but for a split-second quirk of Fate.

Wouldn’t let himself picture it, anyway. He was definitely thinking about it when he pulled up in front of the little clapboard house. All his senses were on hair-trigger alert and the short hairs rising on the back of his neck. He wondered how in the hell he was going to be able to check out the house without leaving Mary alone and unguarded in the car.

As it happened, while he was silently grinding his teeth and pondering the matter, she took it out of his hands. Almost before the SUV stopped rolling, before he had any idea what she had in mind, she opened up her door and jumped out. By the time he got the motor turned off and the keys out of the ignition and his own door open, she was already halfway across the raggedy dandelion-studded grass, right out in the open, unshielded, unguarded.

With fear and fury propelling him, he caught up with her in about two strides. He grabbed her arm-ignoring her gasp of outraged protest-and steered her away from the front steps and around the side of the house to the back, where he shoved her down beside the stoop and told her to stay there while he did a sweep for intruders. He was almost as surprised as she was when she obeyed him. He could feel her seething about it, though, when he came back and hauled her up the steps and shielded her with his body while she unlocked the door.

Inside the kitchen, he locked the door and pulled down the shades, this time making sure to keep a good firm grip on her arm in case she had any more ideas about dashing off without waiting for him to check things out first. Again, it didn’t make her happy; this time the look she gave him when he told her to stay put while he had a look around probably should have turned him to stone.

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” he said mildly when he met her in the living room, feeling a little more relaxed now he’d made sure there weren’t any hitmen lurking in her closets or under the bed. Somehow it didn’t surprise him that she hadn’t obeyed his order to stay in the kitchen.

“No,” she snapped, “I’m not.” She had her arms folded and one hip stuck out, and everything about her but the color of her hair screamed, Red-Headed Woman-Handle with Care!

It was an attitude Roan was well acquainted with, having spent a good part of his life in the company of red- haired females, but what he wasn’t prepared for was the little hot spot that opened up in the bottom of his belly, like a slumbering coal flaring to life.

“I’m through being meek and mild,” she bit out between heaving breaths, her eyes spitting green-gold fire, and the thought, Meek and mild? You’ve got to be kidding! flashed through his mind. But the urge to break into a grin vanished when she continued, and he saw the fire in her eyes was just one shaky step away from tears. “I’m tired of…of letting some-some man run my life. Like I’m a little child who needs to be told what to do. Okay, I’ve let it happen, but no more. I’m not a child, I’m a grownup, dammit. I decide whether to go or stay, whether to hide or not. My choice.”

“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice stern, grateful for the sunglasses that wouldn’t let her see what was in his eyes. He folded his arms and faced her across a barrier of space so charged with electricity it seemed almost to hum. “You’re right. You choose. Tell me what you want to do. Do you want to stay here, wait for Diego DelRey or his hitman to come for you? Or do you want to come stay out at my ranch where I can protect you?”

She stared at him through a long, vibrating silence, while the fire in her eyes slowly died. Finally… “I want to stay with you,” she whispered.

The naked longing in her face hit him like a fist in the gut. Reaching for her was a reflex. But she’d already turned away from him, jerky as a mechanical doll.

Stupid, Mary thought. Stupid! Oh God, Oh God, I hope I didn’t let him see….

But she had. She knew she had. She hadn’t missed the way his face…at least the part of it she could see…had changed. She was only glad he was wearing sunglasses, so she hadn’t had to see the pity in his eyes.

“I’ll just be a minute,” she muttered breathlessly as she fled like a coward to her bedroom.

She meant it, too-about taking a minute to pack; she had it down to a science. She began to pull clothes out of drawers and dump them into the suitcase she’d hauled out from the bottom of her closet, pausing long enough to call back to him, “I think I saw a cat carrier in the garage…maybe you could-”

She heard a growled, “I’ll get it,” then the thump of boots on hardwood.

She heard the kitchen door slam. And all the fight and defiance went out of her like air from a balloon. She let the pile of clothes slip from her arms and gripped the edges of the suitcase that was lying open on the bed, leaned on her hands, bowed her head and closed her eyes, weighed down by an overwhelming sense of grief and loss.

I don’t want to do this.

The packing thing she may have had down pat, but the leaving…that was another matter. She thought of all the places she’d left…all the people, most of the time just when she was beginning to get to know them…never long enough to feel that sense of home…of belonging. She had a sudden fierce urge to pick up the suitcase and heave it through the nearest window.

No more. I don’t want to leave again. Not this town. This is where I want to belong.

How insane was that, when this was the town where she’d been assaulted, nearly raped, arrested and charged with murder? Where, but for the sake of a sympathetic judge, she would right now be in jail?

All right, maybe not the town, but the people. Kind people, like Miss Ada and Betty. People who need me, like Susie Grace.

And Roan. You know very well this isn’t about the town, or the people. It’s about one person. Roan.

How insane was that, to fall for the sheriff who’d arrested her and put her in jail for a murder she hadn’t committed?

It was all too much…everything coming down on her at once, happening way too fast. She could feel emotions looming, piling up in her like snow on a precipice. It wouldn’t take much to bring it all tumbling down on her. And so what? she thought recklessly. Let it come. She would welcome it. After everything that had happened to her, after the long, long struggle to outrun Destiny, it would be almost a relief to finally let it sweep her away…

Without a car cluttering up the garage, Roan was able to find the cat carrier without too much difficulty. After sweeping off the worst of the dust, he carried it into the kitchen and left it there while he went to see how Mary was coming along with her packing.

He found her standing in the middle of her bedroom, frowning at a half-filled suitcase on the bed in front of her. She looked no less emotionally fragile than when he’d left her, so he knocked softly on the door frame and eased into the room much the way he’d have entered the cage of a sleeping lioness.

“Found the carrier,” he said, keeping his voice to a neutral mutter. “Now all I need’s the cat. Any idea where I might find him?”

She jerked around, her hair in tumbled disarray, her mouth forming an O of distress. “Oh-oh God. He could be anywhere-curled up asleep somewhere…hunting…visiting the neighbors… He always comes home when he knows I’m here, though. He’ll be here-I know he will. If we wait-”

“Mary…” He said it with a sigh, knowing the battle that was coming. “The longer we wait, the less chance we have of getting you out of town undetected. We can’t-”

She held up a hand. “No-don’t. Don’t even say it.”

Well, he’d known she was going to fight him on it, and she didn’t disappoint him. Her eyes were getting the shimmer again-the fire-and-rain thing that grabbed him in some deep-down part of himself that didn’t know how to say no.

“I’m not leaving without him, Roan. I mean it.”

“Mary-” He put his hands on her arms, gently stroking. Meaning only to comfort her…make her see reason. Honest to God.

She shook her head rapidly, further dislodging her hair from its haphazard moorings and sending strands of it