Bachelor Sheriff. Пола Грейвс

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СКАЧАТЬ her over the years was the one who’d set fire to her house, she could tip off Aaron and put an end to the whole mess before he had to bother her clients.

      The women she worked with had lived in sheer hell for years before making their escape. The last thing they needed was a nosy deputy dragging them back through hell all over again.

      BY MIDMORNING, the day had warmed to the low fifties with bright sunlight to ward off the chill. The living room of the guest cottage was cozy and warm, morning sunlight through the front windows casting a cheerful glow across the homey furniture. Aaron found himself fighting the urge to stretch out on the sofa and take a nap.

      Melissa and her puppy had disappeared into one of the bedrooms soon after they’d arrived, staying awake only long enough for a quick shower and the breakfast of eggs and toast Aaron’s mother had had waiting for them when they walked through the door to the lakeside cabin.

      His mother, Beth, had also put fresh sheets on the beds and turned up the central heating to a cozy warmth. After Melissa had gone to bed, Beth had stayed a few minutes to talk to him, managing to glean the basics of Melissa’s plight from him with a few subtle, well-aimed questions.

      “You don’t seriously think that poor girl tried to burn her own house down, do you?” His mother’s tone of voice had made him feel as if he were a complete creep to entertain the notion for a second.

      He’d been relieved to admit he didn’t think Melissa had set the fire. But he hadn’t told his mother his strong feeling that Melissa knew who had.

      The expression on her face when Perry had told them the fire had been set deliberately hadn’t been shock. It had been fear, liberally tinged with a strange sort of fatalism, as if she’d been waiting for just such a thing to happen.

      So as he finished up calls to the office to brief his commander and get a few investigative balls rolling, he found himself wondering why Melissa Draper had been so unsurprised to hear someone had tried to kill her.

      The soft click of the bedroom door down the hallway gave him time to school his features into a cool mask of professionalism. He waited until he heard her pad quietly into the living room before he turned to look at her.

      His breath hitched halfway into his lungs. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deliberately despite the sudden, unexpected pounding of his heart. She wasn’t what he’d call pretty, exactly—she never had been. Her forehead was too wide, her blue eyes too large, her lips too bow-shaped, her skin too milky pale. Her dark hair had always been straight and shapeless, though instead of letting the straight locks hang down over her shoulders she now wore it pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

      She wore a pair of faded jeans just tight enough to reveal a nice pair of legs and a loose-fitting gray T-shirt that concealed too much for him to get a good idea what the rest of her body looked like. Unfortunately, his mind seemed determined to fill in the blanks all by itself.

      “I thought you’d be gone.” Her sleep-raspy voice hit like a jolt of caffeine. He instantly focused on her, from the faint scent of shampoo in her still-damp hair to the way her lips parted to reveal a flash of perfect white teeth.

      He was reacting to her like some sex-starved loser who hadn’t gotten lucky in a decade. And that definitely wasn’t him. What the hell was wrong with him?

      He liked tough, driven women who embraced his no-promises, no-regrets idea of relationships with as much enthusiasm as he always had. He sure as hell didn’t play with the hearts of women who looked as breakable as Melissa Draper.

      She’d said something, he reminded himself, trying to gather his scattered thoughts to remember her remark. “I’m working here,” he answered, appalled when he stumbled over his words. Clearing his throat, he dragged his attention back to the notes he’d been making for the report he’d type up when he got back to the office. “I thought I’d wait until you woke up.”

      “I’m up,” she said.

      “Trying to get rid of me?”

      She gave him an odd look and moved to sit stiffly on the chair across from the sofa where he sat. She looked nervous, he noted, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with whatever secrets she was keeping. “Is my car here yet?”

      He frowned. “You’re not thinking of leaving.”

      She met his frown with a scowl of her own. “Am I under arrest? I must have missed the Miranda warning.”

      “You’re not under arrest.”

      “Yet.”

      He pressed his lips together, annoyed—at her for being so stubborn and confrontational and with himself for the way his heart was pounding with excitement because she was sitting close enough that he could smell her soap-and-water scent every time he took a breath.

      He hadn’t been on a date in a while, thanks to his recent promotion at the Sheriff’s Department and all the catching up he had to do on current cases. Clearly, he needed to remedy that problem, pretty damned pronto.

      But he was finding it harder these days to find a woman who really sparked his interest. Wasn’t that really the problem, more than the lack of time?

      He wondered how much it had to do with the changes in his own family. Four marriages in the last three years, all of them deliriously happy, at least from the outside looking in—they’d been enough to force him to take a second look at the way he’d chosen to live his life over the past few years.

      He’d come to believe that true, lasting love—the kind his parents shared—was the exception, not the rule. He’d seen people destroy each other in the name of love.

      He’d seen people destroy themselves—

      “Is my car here or not?” Melissa’s impatient voice interrupted him.

      “It’s out front.” His voice emerged in a low growl. “Deputy Clayton dropped it off about an hour ago. You’re free to go anywhere you want, as long as you don’t leave the area. We’re going to have more questions for you.”

      He grabbed his phone and his notebook, stuffing both in the pocket of his leather jacket. The faint smell of smoke assailed his nostrils, reminding him how she’d looked earlier that morning in the cab of his truck, all big blue eyes and shaky bravado. He’d better run by his house to get another jacket, he decided, or he might not get any work done the rest of the day.

      “You’re leaving?” She trailed him to the door.

      He paused in the doorway, surprised to find her standing so close. “I need to type up the report and check on some other cases we’re working. If you need anything, give me a call.” He leaned forward, telling himself it wasn’t to get a better whiff of her heady scent. “And if you suddenly remember who might have wanted to hurt you, you know where to find me.”

      Her eyes met his, full of secrets. When she didn’t answer, he forced himself to turn and leave.

      In the cab of his truck, he took a couple of long, deep breaths. Grabbing his phone from his pocket, he dialed the number of the Betancourt Law Firm in Maybridge and asked for Tina Lewis, a lawyer he’d gone out with a few months earlier.

      “Hey, Tina, it’s Aaron,” he said when she answered. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

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