The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

because Susie Grace wasn’t allowed to watch TV…

Then he saw the dark sedan.

Diego spun toward the sound, jerking Mary around too, pressed against him, his arm tight against her throat again.

“I said, turn her loose.” Boyd was a dark silhouette in the barn doorway, his bow-legged shape like something out of an old Western movie. Like something from a Western movie, too, was the old-fashioned weapon he held in his hand.

When Mary heard the clicking sound of the gun being cocked, she reacted out of instinct, perhaps helped by the self-defense classes she’d taken long ago. She stomped savagely on Diego’s instep, then let her body go limp.

Diego DelRey wasn’t a powerful man. In pain, and finding himself with Mary’s full dead weight in his arms, he gave a bellow of rage and let her slip to the ground.

Roan was out of the SUV before the wheels had stopped turning. A quick check of the sedan told him it was empty. He was heading for the house at a dead run when he heard the shot.

It sounded like thunder, trapped in the confines of that old wooden building. As it died away, Mary could hear panic-stricken wings flapping somewhere up in the rafters. Somewhere behind her, Diego was a motionless dark shape in the straw. She lifted her head and saw Boyd standing in the barn doorway, his arm hanging limp at his side, the gun pointing at the floor. She gave a little whimpering cry and was scrambling over to him on her hands and knees when she saw Roan running toward her.

She tried to rise, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. And then he was there, helping her up, folding her into his arms and holding her tightly. Whispering brokenly into her hair. “Oh God…Mary…Mary. Are you okay? Did he hurt you? Oh…God…Mary.”

Roan held on to her shaking body and knew he didn’t want to let go of her ever again. But when Boyd walked over to him, he knew he was going to have to, for a little while, at least. He peeled himself away from her and turned her into the curve of his arm to keep her close, and Boyd handed him his old Colt 45 revolver, butt-first.

“Want you both to know,” the rancher said in his gruff and crusty voice, “I wouldn’t’a let her go to jail.” He hesitated, then touched the bill of his cap and gave a little nod. “You got things to finish up here. I’ll be waitin’ for you in the car.”

His footsteps crunched away into the night.

Roan caught Mary’s arms. “Susie Grace-”

“It’s okay-she’s okay. She’s at Boyd’s.” Her voice broke and grew thick with tears. “Oh Roan… Boyd?”

“I’m afraid so.” Aching with love and grief, he took her face between his hands and whispered as he kissed away her tears, “It’s all over, Mary. The nightmare’s over. You’re free.”

It was the wee hours of the morning before Mary got to sleep. Long after Roan had left to accompany Boyd and Diego DelRey’s body back to town, after Susie Grace had fallen asleep with a placidly purring Cat tucked under her arm, she sat huddled in the middle of Roan’s bed, hugging her drawn-up knees, with the words Roan had said to her echoing inside her head.

The nightmare’s over. You’re free.

Why, then, did she feel such desolation?

She must have fallen asleep at last, because she woke up when she heard Susie Grace in the kitchen, rattling cereal bowls and scolding Cat for jumping on the counter. She got up, sticky-eyed and fuzzy-headed, long enough to see Susie Grace off on the school bus, then crept back to bed, too dispirited to begin the task of packing. She knew she had to do it-Roan would be coming back, soon, to take her home. Not home. To Queenie’s house, not mine. Boyd had been arrested for the murder of Jason Holbrook, who had killed his daughter… Roan’s wife. The charges against Mary would be dropped. She could have her car back. Her life.

My life. But what is my life now?

Again, she must have slept. She woke with her throat parched and chest aching, having dreamed-Roan had been wrong about the nightmares-of being chased endlessly by something or someone terrifying she couldn’t see. As she lay in groggy half-awareness, it came again-the sound that had awakened her-a wrenching metallic screech.

Scrambling out of bed, she rushed into the hallway. And saw Roan, with a crowbar in his hands, pulling nails out of the boards that held the plywood barricade in place.

“Roan?” she said in a wondering voice. Her stomach dropped and her legs weakened at the sight of him. He threw her a look of such endearing uncertainty, it grew hard for her to breathe.

“Sorry to wake you,” he grunted as he attacked another nail, not sounding sorry at all.

“What are you doing?” She ventured closer, catching her hair with both hands and dragging it back from her forehead.

“Thought maybe it was time I finished this.” He glanced at her, then quickly away to stare narrow-eyed at the last remaining board, just above his head. His voice was a muffled rumble. “Never know-might have need of it someday.”

He lifted the crowbar, wedged it under the board and gave it a mighty yank. The board came away with another of those earsplitting screeches. He tossed it aside and stretched his arms wide to grasp the edges of the plywood. His muscles bulged beneath the soft fabric of his shirt as he lifted it, turned it, and propped it against the wall.

Mary gave a little gasp as light poured into the dark hallway. Then she followed Roan as he stepped across the ragged threshold, into a forest of two-by-fours.

“Doesn’t need all that much,” he said, peering up at the underside of the roof. “Sheetrock…a little paint. Bathroom’s all plumbed.” He looked at Mary, a longer look this time, and she saw the vulnerability he tried so hard to hide. “It’ll be a nice big bathroom when it’s done.”

It came to her then, with a force and clarity that rocked her to the depths of her soul, what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to say. She knew. “Roan,” she said softly, “don’t you think you should get back on the horse?”

For another long moment he glared at her, eyes narrowed and fierce, blue and bright as chips of sky. A great breath rushed from his chest. “Ah, hell, Mary, what do you want me to say? That I’d like it if you’d stay here with me? Maybe help me rebuild this place? Shoot, you know I would. But I know this ranch is a long ways away from the life that’s waitin’ for you out there. You’re free to go back to it now. Pick up from where it got taken away from you ten years ago.”

No-he wouldn’t ask it of her. Wouldn’t do that to her. The tears he could see shimmering in those green-gold eyes of hers were hard enough to bear. He was so busy denying himself happiness, denying it so vehemently, it was a moment before he realized what she was saying, in her husky, shaking whisper.

“Roan…don’t you know? There’s nothing of that life I want. Not anymore. That life…was my past. My future?” She hitched one shoulder, and a tear spilled over and ran down her cheek. She brushed it away with a little laughing sob. “I’d like to think that might be here…with you. And Susie Grace.”

“Really?” He felt exhausted, suddenly…wracked with pain and a sort of dazed and wary hope, the way he imagined a marathon runner must feel when he staggers across the finish line…unable to grasp the fact that the long race is finally over, and that he’s won. “I’m just a small-town sheriff, Mary, all I’ve got-”

The tears in her eyes seemed to sizzle, now. “Maybe a small-town sheriff is what I want.”

He frowned down at her, still not ready to believe. “You’d really stay with me? Marry me?” She nodded, vigorously, touching her fingers to her tear-drenched lips. He let out an exasperated breath. “Then I’ve really got to ask you, why?”

“Because I love you,” she burst out, laughing and crying again. Fire and rain. “I really love you. So much I’m willing to marry you in the hopes that someday you’ll come to love me.”

“Come to-” He stared at her, stunned, then reached for her with shaking hands. “My God, Mary,” he whispered as he pulled her to him, “don’t you know? I do already. Love you.”

“I know,” she murmured with a long sigh as she snuggled joyfully against him. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

On the day Boyd Stuart was arraigned on murder charges for the shooting of Jason Holbrook, and the charges against Mary Owen were formally dismissed, Roan paid a visit to the cemetery. He went there fairly regularly,