The Sheriff Wins A Wife. Jill Limber

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      Chapter Two

      Trace strode away from Jenn, still trying to get his emotions under control. He wanted to put his fist through a wall.

      Hey, Trace, how’s it going? What kind of a greeting was that after almost eight years? He jammed his sunglasses back on and stomped out of the swine barn into the blazing sunshine.

      They had been as close as two people could be. He had loved her so much he’d ached with it. Was he the only one who remembered that? Had he been harboring the remnants of some adolescent crush all these years? Obviously his emotions had been deeply buried, surfacing to smack him unexpectedly now. Now he had no idea what to do about them.

      He stepped into the judging barn and headed for the fair offices. He needed to find Stan, the 4H adviser. Trace had offered to help out with checking in the projects, but he wasn’t going to deal with Kelly’s pig—or Jenn–until he had some time to figure out what was going on in his head and how he was going to handle it. Stan would have to check in Kelly’s project.

      Over at the stock pens, where animals waited for the vet, a child climbing up the slats had Trace changing direction.

      The boy, his back to Trace, was on a pen that held a particularly nasty bull from the rodeo herd. He had a broken horn and a bad attitude, along with a habit of charging the fence.

      “Hey, kid, get down off there!” Trace broke into a run as the bull turned and spotted the child.

      When the boy didn’t respond, Trace hollered again. “You, kid, in the red shirt, jump down!”

      The boy continued to ignore him. The bull’s head was down and Trace could hear him snorting from twenty feet away. Trace closed the distance in record time and snagged the little boy around the waist, jerking him off the pen.

      The sound of ripping fabric was quickly drowned out by the bull crashing into the fence, his horns raking the wood with a splintering screech.

      Trace backed up, set the boy down and spun him around. “What were you thinking?” he yelled. The boy’s terrified freckled face didn’t look familiar.

      The child looked up at Trace, but said nothing. His whole body shook.

      “Who are you here with?” Trace moved the child another few steps away as the bull readied himself for another run at the boards. Whoever was supposed to be supervising this boy was doing a bad job.

      The child turned to bolt, then flinched when Trace reached down to keep him in his place. Just as he placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder someone called his name.

      “Trace, stop!”

      He saw Jenn ran toward them, looking as scared as the boy.

      “Don’t hurt him.”

      Hurt him?

      She arrived panting and out of breath, and scooped the boy into a hug. His little arms went around her shoulders and his legs gripped her waist as he buried his face against her neck.

      “What did you think I was going to do? Give him a beating?”

      “No, oh, no. Sorry. I was scared.”

      He nodded, but the notion that she thought he would hurt a child stung.

      “Thank you,” she said, gulping air as she patted the boy on the back.

      “Who is this kid?”

      “My son, Zack.” She continued to stroke the boy’s thin little back.

      For the second time that day Trace felt as if he’d been smacked by a two-by-four. Jenn had a child?

      She smoothed a hand over Zack’s curly brown hair, as if СКАЧАТЬ