The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

She turned her face to him; her eyes searched his and slowly came alive with wonder. “No…” she breathed, like someone beholding a miracle. “I guess…that’s true.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply, taking a long sweet time about it. Desire for her was welling up hot in him again, like steam in a geyser, and when he rolled onto his back and brought her on top of him, her body already felt familiar to him. Her soft warm body slid over his hardness like an all-over caress, as she settled herself with a pleased little wiggle and a chuckle of surprise.

“Told you it’s been a long time,” Roan growled.

The SUV sped along the two-lane paved road that wound between pastures nestled among foothills studded with junipers and carpeted with wildflowers. Along the summits, pine trees stood like dark sentinels against a pale-blue sky streaked with feathery clouds. Roan drove with the windows down, and the air was warm and smelled of grass and pine needles and grazing cattle and all sorts of new growing things. It teased Mary’s hair and stirred across her skin like a lover’s caress, reminding nerve-endings of sensations reawakened such a short time ago.

Memories of that reawakening blew through her with a blast of heat that took her breath away. She glanced over at Roan, biting her lip to hold back a smile. But he was driving, as he had been since they’d left Hartsville, with one elbow planted on the window ledge, his hand resting across the bottom part of his face, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and focused on something far beyond the road ahead. He’d done that on the way back from Bozeman, she remembered-it seemed an age ago now, the day she’d first known she was falling in love with the Marlboro Man-the Sheriff of Hart County, Montana.

Heartbreak County, she thought, and felt the heat inside her dissipate before a wicked little chill of fear.

“Regrets?” she asked softly.

He threw her a quick surprised glance. His eyes were shielded behind the glasses, now, but a smile deepened the little depressions in his cheeks in a way that made her heart wallow drunkenly. “Regrets? Nah…worries, maybe.” Eyes back on the road, his smile grew wry.

“Worries?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, like how I’m gonna keep my hands off you when you’re sleeping under my roof, living with me in my house, right along with my father-in-law and my child.”

Her stomach was quivering with something that felt oddly like butterflies, and she didn’t reply.

After a moment Roan threw her another glance, this one without the smile. “Truth is, Mary, I don’t know quite what I’m gonna do about you.” She couldn’t think how to answer that, so she didn’t. He faced front again and gave a gusty sigh. “I don’t know if you have any idea how you’ve complicated my life.”

“Your life!” It burst from her on a gust of incredulous laughter. “What about mine? I’ve got a hitman after me and a murder charge hanging over my head!”

“Yeah,” he growled, “and I’m the one that’s got to keep you safe and at the same time find some evidence that’ll clear you.”

Happiness burst inside her and spread through her whole being. She felt breathless with joy and hope. “You believe me? That I’m innocent?”

“Well, yeah, I thought I made that pretty clear a little while back.” He glanced at her, forehead creased in a puzzled little frown, then shifted as he faced forward again, as if the seat was getting uncomfortable for him. “Never did think you were guilty, to tell the truth.”

“Then why-” She shook her head, unable to finish it. Her lips felt numb. Her face and throat ached. She couldn’t think of that dreadful humiliating time without feeling sick.

“Why did I arrest you?” This time the look he gave her was dark with anger, though she felt fairly certain it wasn’t directed at her. “Because,” he said in a quiet and dangerous rumble, like the grinding of rock, “if I hadn’t, someone else would have.” And she watched his face-the part she could see-close up as dramatically as if a curtain had been whisked across it. After a moment he said in a voice as expressionless as his features, “I figured if I did it I’d at least have some control over how it was done. How you were treated.” He flicked her another brief glance. “Hope it wasn’t too bad for you. I tried to spare you where I could.”

There was an ache in her throat she couldn’t explain-unless it was a response to the emotions she could sense simmering beneath the surface of his icy calm…intense emotions she couldn’t begin to understand. There was hurt, there, too.

She opened her mouth to answer him, but the words weren’t there. What she really wanted-desperately longed to do-was reach across the console between them and take his hand…touch his arm…rub the back of his neck. But she didn’t know if she had the right to such a gestures of intimacy.

Intimacy. They’d shared a kind, certainly-the physical kind, thoughts of which made her whole body blush even now. But this was different. Emotional intimacy…intimacy of the heart and soul. The difference between sex and love. For a long time she’d thought the two were one and the same. She knew better now.

She gave her head an ambiguous shake and looked away.

Roan cursed himself in silence. Helpless fury simmered in his belly. Hope it wasn’t too bad… Yeah, right. If he’d had any hopes of kidding himself about how bad it had been for her, being arrested, processed and jailed for murder, the memory of Mary’s pinched, pale face would have set him straight.

He knew one thing: He couldn’t let her go back to jail-and it would be state prison, next time, not Hart County’s relatively friendly lockup. He couldn’t even let himself think about that.

One more thing he knew: Whether or not he’d gotten her into the mess she was in, he for damn sure was the only one who could get her out.

Simple enough, really. All he had to do was get the guy who wanted her dead, put him away and find Jason Holbrook’s killer.

As he thought that, the SUV topped the last rise before the long sweep down to the ranch. He heard Mary’s breathing catch, then a long soft sigh, and his heart lifted under his ribs at the thought that she was seeing it the way he did every day of his life, only for the very first time…foothills layered with pine and aspen rolling away to hazy purple mountains capped with snow even in the dead of summer. He never got tired of that vista. Erin had loved it, too. Was it too much to hope for, that he might find another woman who would love it as much? Who’d be as happy here as Erin had been?

The road dropped away beneath the wheels of the SUV, but the hollow sensation in Roan’s stomach was from something else entirely.

It was too much to hope for. So far out of the realm of possibility he was a fool even to think about it. Mary Owen was a woman living in exile. She’d had a life and a career she loved in the big city and would undoubtedly wish to return to it, if she could. If he made it possible. And what bitter irony, he thought, that by eliminating the threats hanging over Mary’s head and giving her back her life, he was sure to lose her.

“Are you sure this is going to be all right with, um…the rest of your family?” Mary asked as the SUV rolled past corrals, feed silos and majestic cottonwoods wearing the soft new green of spring.

The thumbprint in Roan’s cheek deepened with a smile. “You mean Boyd, I imagine-you know Susie Grace is going to be tickled, uh, pink. She’s been pesterin’ for a week to have you over for dinner.”

“All right, Boyd, then.” She drew an uneven breath; the quivering in her stomach was definitely butterflies. She’d never met Boyd Stuart, but she knew who he was. Original owner of this ranch, father of Roan’s murdered wife. And how was he going to feel about his son-in-law bringing a strange woman into his daughter’s house? His granddaughter’s? A woman accused of murder, at that?

Roan’s grin widened as he pulled the SUV to a stop in the shade of another of those giant cottonwood trees. “Ah, hell, don’t let Boyd scare you. He might be crusty on the outside, but his insides are pure puddin’.” He took the keys from the ignition and turned to look at her. “He knows all about you, by the way-thinks you’re innocent, too. Calls you ‘that little ol’ gal.’”

Mary touched the back of her hand to her lips to contain a helpless gurgle of laughter. Roan took off his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket, and the softness in his eyes, so different from their usual piercing glitter, brought an unexpected sting to hers.

He jerked his head toward his side window. “Well, here it is. It ain’t the Ritz, but for the next little while you’re gonna be calling it home.”

She ducked her head to look out the window and saw a handsome house trimmed with white siding and natural stone, with a wide and welcoming porch skirted with holly and evergreens across the front. Lilacs bloomed along