The Marriage Profile. Metsy Hingle

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      “What can I get for you, Sheriff?”

      Justin glanced up at the petite redhead he recognized from the Lone Star Country Club. “Erica, isn’t it?”

      “That’s right. Erica Clawson,” she replied, and gave him a smile that was a shade too saccharine for his taste. Not at all like Angela’s warm smile, he thought, then chastised himself at once for thinking of her again.

      “You got anything besides soda pop and wine back there, Erica?”

      “What did you have in mind?” she asked, tipping her head to one side flirtatiously.

      “Whiskey, neat,” Justin said, choosing to ignore the come-on. Besides the fact that he wasn’t interested, he’d heard noises that little Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth Erica Clawson had been keeping company of late with Frank Del Brio.

      “Here you go.” She slid the glass toward him, gave him a soulful look.

      “Thanks,” he murmured, taking the drink and turning his back to her. He tossed the whiskey back, welcomed the fiery burn down his throat and the way it spread like acid in his stomach. Like radar, his gaze sought out Angela. She was still with Ricky, their heads bent close together, the two of them in what appeared to be a deep conversation. Justin tightened his fist around the glass, wishing it was Ricky Mercado’s throat. Agitated with himself for letting her get to him, he turned away and slapped the empty glass down on the bar.

      “Another one?”

      “Yeah.” He had the glass halfway to his mouth, was already anticipating the fiery kick, when he noted Ricky leading Angela toward the exit. In the blink of an eye, he had an image of Ricky sliding into the car next to Angela, reaching across the seat to touch her face, to taste her mouth.

      Unable to shake the image, Justin slapped his glass on the counter. Ignoring the slosh of whiskey, he started to get up and follow them when a firm male hand clamped down on his shoulder. “You might want to let your head and your blood cool before you go after her,” Hawk Wainwright told him.

      Justin narrowed his eyes, stared into the sun-darkened face of his half brother. Although he’d been aware of his father’s long-ago affair with the Native American beauty who had been Hawk’s mother, only recently had he and Hawk acknowledged the blood bond between them. The relationship was tenuous at best, and there were old wounds that needed time to heal. But tonight he was feeling too edgy to mince words with Hawk and blurted out, “That a Native American thing? You being able to tell what’s going on inside a man’s head?”

      Hawk smiled, something Justin realized that he could rarely recall the other man doing. “More like an observation.”

      “Then you have some pretty amazing observation skills,” Justin told him, and went back to nursing his drink.

      Hawk declined a drink with a shake of his head and urged Justin away from the bar. “Not all that remarkable. I remembered that the woman you watch with hot eyes was once your wife.”

      “Was being the operative word here. We’re divorced now, have been for more than five years.”

      “There are still strong feelings between you.”

      “Not the kind you’re talking about,” Justin assured him. “Whatever Angela and I had ended a long time ago.”

      “Who are you trying to convince? Me? Or yourself?”

      “Neither. And since discussing my ex isn’t exactly one of my favorite things to do, I’d just as soon drop the subject.”

      “Whatever you say.”

      Noting his brother’s stoic gaze, Justin asked, “What?”

      “I was just wondering if you’ll be able to shut off your feelings for her as easily.”

      “What are you talking about?” Justin asked.

      “I’m talking about the green-eyed monster that eats at your heart now as you think of your woman with another man.”

      “She’s not my woman anymore,” Justin insisted.

      “But you want her to be. Or am I wrong?”

      Justin gritted his teeth and met Hawk’s steady gaze, refusing to answer the question even to himself. “It’s not that simple.”

      “It’s not that complicated, either.”

      “You don’t understand,” Justin told him.

      “Maybe I understand far better than you realize. I may have Apache blood in my veins, but I also have Wainwright blood,” Hawk explained. “I know what it is to want something, to want someone, until that want becomes a hunger that burns like fire in the belly. And I know what it is to feel the steel talons of pride digging deep into the soul until it’s pride that rules one’s tongue and actions instead of what’s here,” he said, thumping a fist against his heart.

      But Justin didn’t need to be reminded that Hawk had spent much of his life wanting to be accepted, to be acknowledged as Archy Wainwright’s son and not merely the bastard half-breed who had been at the root of Archy and Kate’s divorce. Even now Justin couldn’t help but feel a measure of shame at the callous way their father had treated Hawk. Justin also couldn’t help but feel shame of his own, as well as regret, for not doing more to bridge the gap that had long existed between Hawk and the rest of the Wainwrights. Not only had Hawk lost all those years, but he and the rest of his family had lost, too.

      “I nearly let pride cost me the thing I wanted most—Jenny,” Hawk told him, referring to the interior designer who’d recently become his wife. “Don’t make the same mistake I almost did and let pride cost you what you want most.”

      “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” Audrey Lou Cox told him the following morning as Justin prepared to take a sip of the coffee he’d just poured himself.

      “Why? You lace it with arsenic so you can have my job?” Justin teased the stern-faced secretary he’d inherited along with the sheriff’s office. Somewhere between the age of fifty and eighty, the woman had served more than twenty-five years under a string of Mission Creek sheriffs. “You don’t have to kill me to get the job, you know. I keep telling you, the folks in this town would vote you in over me in a heartbeat.”

      “And why on earth would I want your job?”

      “You’d get to wear a badge,” Justin offered.

      The woman didn’t even crack a smile. “I got all the jewelry I want already. Besides, somebody has to keep this place running, and it don’t look like that person’s going to be you if you keep spending all your time traipsing from one end of the county to the other.”

      “You got me there,” Justin told her, and took a sniff of the coffee.

      “Heard there was quite a turnout for the dedication of the maternity ward at the hospital last night.”

      “Yeah, I think half the county was there. You should have come,” Justin told her.

      Audrey Lou sniffed. “And why would I want to spend my evening eating СКАЧАТЬ