Wyatt's Most Wanted Wife. Sandra Steffen

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       Chapter Two

      “Somebody stole your car?” Wyatt asked.

      “Thank God.”

      Wyatt, Luke and Lisa all swung around and looked at Clayt.

      “Are you happy about this?” Lisa asked.

      Clayt Carson had the grace to look sheepish. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, ma’am. I’m just relieved because my little girl couldn’t have been responsible for stealing a car.”

      Swiping his faded brown cowboy hat off his head, he glanced at Wyatt and said, “You don’t think Haley took it, do you?”

      Wyatt settled his hands to his hips and gave Clayt’s question careful consideration. The man had every reason to be worried. During the past two months since she’d come to live with her father, nine-year-old Haley Carson had been a handful. She had been caught stealing food off Lisa and Jillian’s front porch last month, but Wyatt didn’t think a little kid was responsible for stealing a car. Even if the child in question was Haley Carson. Shifting his gaze to Lisa, he asked, “Did you leave your keys in the ignition?”

      She shook her head. “I know most people out here do, but I haven’t gotten out of the habit of stashing my keys in my purse every time I get out of my car.”

      “There you have it,” Wyatt told Clayt. “Unless Haley knows how to hot-wire an automobile, she’s off the hook.”

      Clayt crammed his hat back on his head and visibly relaxed. Wyatt slanted his two best friends an arched look. They both looked at Lisa, then at him and then at each other. With half smiles the Carsons were famous for, they tugged at the brims of their hats and muttered something about other places they had to be.

      It was all Lisa could do not to shake her head and roll her eyes at the way those two men swaggered out of the office. They couldn’t possibly think she’d actually bought their little show of innocence, could they? Oh, she didn’t doubt that they had someplace they had to go. After all, there probably were cattle for Luke to inoculate, and Clayt probably did have to get home to his daughter. But those boys were ranchers, not actors, and they left because Wyatt had given them the signal to go.

      In the wake of creaking floorboards and the resounding clatter of the door, the room seemed inordinately silent. That silence wrapped around Lisa, as thick as the air before a thunderstorm and just as invigorating.

      She wasn’t sure why she chose that particular moment to glance up at Wyatt, but once she had, she couldn’t look away. This was one of the few times she’d seen him without his white Stetson. His hair was a dark shade of blond. She wasn’t surprised it wasn’t shaggy around the edges. Oh, no, Wyatt McCully was probably one of those men who got his hair cut the first week of every month just like clockwork. She’d seen his eyes before, so their golden shade of brown came as no surprise, either. Today, she was more concerned about the interest smoldering in their depths.

      His skin was as tanned as every other cowboy’s she’d met out here. Except Wyatt wasn’t a cowboy who wore chaps and spurs. He was the local sheriff. Lisa didn’t really care what a man did for a living, and she certainly couldn’t fault him for the way he looked in his uniform. It wasn’t his beige shirt that put her off. It wasn’t even his badge. It was his reputation. According to the grapevine in Jasper Gulch, Wyatt McCully didn’t swear, he didn’t drink much and didn’t chew tobacco. Word had it he’d never gotten in trouble in his entire life.

      Lisa Markman had been in plenty. She wasn’t ashamed of where she’d been or who she’d become. But she knew what she wanted, what she needed. And she wasn’t going to find it in this office.

      “Did you know it’s bad luck to open an umbrella indoors?”

      She glanced from her open umbrella straight into his eyes. “Yes, well, Danger is my middle name.”

      “Is that a fact?”

      Lisa imagined that a lot of female heads had been turned by that deep, rich voice. It was time to let him know he couldn’t turn hers. She pressed a button on her umbrella. By the time she’d smoothed the folds into place, she knew how to put an end to the interest in Wyatt’s eyes.

      “Look, sheriff, if I could have handled this myself, I wouldn’t have set foot in this place, but I really need to get my car back. I have a shipment of Western clothes to pick up in Pierre this morning. So, do you think we could get this over with?”

      The stiffening of his shoulders was almost imperceptible, and so was the flicker of disappointment way in the back of his eyes. Lisa felt a moment’s remorse because she knew she was responsible for both. But she had to hand it to him; there was no resentment or condescension in his attitude.

      She would have preferred it if he hadn’t called attention to his strength and agility by spinning a high-backed chair around with one hand and effortlessly placing it next to his desk, but she couldn’t fault the polite tilt of his head as he motioned for her to take a seat, or the way he moved to the other side of his desk and sat down.

      He reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out a form. With pencil in hand, he said, “Let’s start with your full name. First, last and middle initial.”

      She handled the first and last names well enough, but before she could tell him her middle initial, her gaze got stuck on his hands, and her mind floundered. He didn’t have the hands of a man who pushed a pencil for a living. His hands were large and callused, his fingers blunt tipped, his knuckles scraped.

      “Is your middle initial really D?” he asked.

      “Yes.”

      “For Danger?“

      “It’s D,” she said automatically, “for Destiny.”

      Realizing what she’d said, she glanced СКАЧАТЬ