Big Sky River. Linda Miller Lael

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      CHAPTER TWO

      LIKE TRAFFIC LIGHTS, ATMs were few and far between in Parable, which was why Boone figured he shouldn’t have been surprised to run into his snarky—if undeniably hot—neighbor, Tara Kendall, right outside Cattleman’s First National Bank. He was just turning away from the machine, traveling cash in hand, his mind already in Missoula with his boys and the others, when Tara whipped her jazzy sports car into the space next to his borrowed truck. She wore a dress the same cherry-red as her ride, and her golden retriever, a littermate to Kendra’s dog, Daisy, rode beside her, seat belt in place.

      Tara’s smile was as blindingly bright as the ones in those ads for tooth-whitening strips—she’d probably recognized the big extended-cab pickup he was driving as belonging to Hutch and Kendra, and expected to meet up with one or both of them—but the dazzle faded quickly when she realized that this was a case of mistaken identity.

      Her expression said it all. No Hutch, no Kendra. Just the backwoods redneck sheriff who wrecked her view of the countryside with his double-wide trailer and all-around lack of DIY motivation.

      The top was down on the sports car and Boone could see that, like its mistress, the dog was wearing sunglasses, probably expensive ones, a fact that struck Boone as just too damn cute to be endured. Didn’t the woman know this was Montana, not L.A. or New York?

      Getting out of the spiffy roadster, Tara let her shades slip down off the bridge of her perfect little nose and looked him over in one long, dismissive sweep of her gold-flecked blue eyes, moving from his baseball cap to the ratty old boots on his feet.

      “Casual day at the office, Sheriff?” she asked, singsonging the words.

      Boone set his hands on his hips and leveled his gaze at her, pleased to see a pinkish flush blossom under those model-perfect cheekbones of hers. He and Tara had gotten off on the wrong foot when she had moved onto the land adjoining his, and she’d made it plain, right from the get-go, that she considered him a hopeless hick, a prime candidate for a fifteen-minute segment on The Jerry Springer Show. She’d come right out and said his place was an eyesore—in the kindest possible way, of course.

      In his opinion, Tara was not only a city slicker, out of touch with ordinary reality, but a snob to boot. Too bad she had that perfect body and that head of shiny hair. Without those, it would have been easier to dislike her.

      “Hello to you, too, neighbor,” Boone said, in a dry drawl when he was darned good and ready to speak up. “How about this weather?”

      She frowned at him, making a production of ferreting through her shoulder bag and bringing out her wallet. Behind her, in the passenger seat, the dog yawned without displacing its aviator glasses, as though bored. The lenses were mirrored.

      “If you’re finished at the machine—?” Tara said, with a little rolling motion of one manicured hand. For a chicken rancher, she was stylin’.

      Boone stepped aside to let her pass. “You shouldn’t do that, you know,” he heard himself telling her. It wasn’t as if she’d welcome any advice from him, after all, no matter how good it might be.

      “Do what?” She had the faintest sprinkling of freckles across her nose, he noticed, oddly disconcerted by the discovery.

      “Get your wallet out between the car and the ATM,” Boone answered, in sheriff mode even if he was dressed like a homeless person. He was in a hurry to get to Missoula, that was all. Hadn’t wanted to take the time to change clothes. “It’s not safe.”

      Tara paused and, sunglasses jammed up into her bangs now, batted her thick lashes at him in a mockery of naïveté. “Surely nothing bad could happen with the sheriff of all Parable County right here to protect me,” she replied, going all sugary. She had the ATM card out of her wallet by then, and looked ready to muscle past him to get to the electronic wonder set into the bank’s brick wall.

      “Have it your way,” Boone said tersely. Why wasn’t he back in Hutch’s flashy truck by now, headed out of town? He wanted to see his boys, do what he could do for Molly and her three kids, maybe stop by the hospital and find out how Bob was holding up. But it was as if roots had poked right through the bottoms of his boots and the layer of concrete beneath them to break ground, wind down deep, and finally twist themselves into a hell of a tangle, and that pissed him off more than Tara’s snooty attitude ever had.

      “Thank you,” she said, a little less sweetly, brushing by him and shoving her bank card into the slot before jabbing at a sequence of buttons on the number pad. “I will.”

      Boone rolled his eyes. Sighed. “People get robbed at ATMs all the time,” he pointed out, chafing under the self-imposed delay. It would take a couple hours to reach Missoula, who knew how long to sort things out and load up the kids, and then two more hours to make it home again. And that was if they didn’t stop along the way for supper.

      Tara took the card out of the machine, collected a stack of bills from the appropriate opening, and started the process all over again. Who needed that much cash?

      Maybe it was a habit from living in New York.

      Her back—and a fine little back it was, partly bared by that skimpy sundress of hers—was turned to him the whole time, and she smelled like sun-dried laundry and wildflowers. “In Parable?” she retorted. “Who would dare to commit a crime in your town, Boone Taylor?”

      He waited until she’d completed the second transaction and turned around, nearly bumping into him. She was waving all those twenties around like the host on some TV game show, just asking for trouble. “I do my best,” he told her, enjoying the flash of flustered annoyance that lit her eyes and pulsed in her cheeks, “but Parable isn’t immune to crime, and there are some risks nobody but a damn fool will take.”

      She arched her eyebrows, shoved her sunglasses back into place with an eloquent gesture of the middle finger on her right hand. “Are you calling me a damn fool?” she asked, in a tone about as companionable as a room full of pissed-off porcupines.

      “No,” Boone said evenly. I’m calling you a spoiled city girl with a very high opinion of yourself, he thought but didn’t say. “I’m only suggesting that you might want to be a little more careful in the future, that’s all. Like I said before, Parable is a good town, but strangers do pass through here, in broad daylight as well as after dark, and we might even have a few closet outlaws in our midst.”

      Tara blinked up at him. “Are you through?” she asked politely.

      He spread his hands and smirked a little, deliberately. “I tried,” he said. He could have added, “Don’t come crying to me if you get mugged,” but of course she’d have every right to do just that, since he was the law.

      She went around him, sort of stalked back toward her car. It was amusing to watch the slight sway of her hips under that gauzy dress as she moved.

      “Thanks so much,” she said tersely, opening the СКАЧАТЬ