A Sheriff in Tennessee (16 page)

She meant to tell him; she really did. She even opened her mouth. But all that came out was a moan when his lips closed over her breast.

He might not have been interested in them before, but he made up for it now, driving her to a clinging, shaking peak with his mouth alone.

All thought lost, sensation took its place. Gentleness abandoned, madness overcame the two of them. He touched her everywhere, in every way. Drove her up, then held her as she fell, and drove her right back again.

When at last he made use of a condom, she was already limp and hoarse, but when he filled her and kissed her once more as he'd kissed her already a hundred times before, she arched to take him deeper, felt him touch her inside where it counted, and called his name as she followed him home.

K
LEIN LAY
with Isabelle sprawled over his chest as the moon slanted silver across the bed. While he couldn't believe he'd just done what he'd done, he also couldn't regret it, even though he had no doubt this would end badly.

He couldn't let himself become emotionally attached to her. He was asking to have his heart ripped out again. Isabelle was special and different, but she wasn't going to stay, and she certainly wasn't going to ask him to go with her when she left, even if he could. There was no future for them, and he couldn't delude himself into believing there was, as he'd deluded himself once before.

Tonight might be the only night they would have, and perhaps that was for the best—though he didn't know how he would be able to keep from touching her, wanting her, needing her every minute of every day they had left.

He sighed, and she lifted her head. Her loose and tangled hair drifted across his belly, tickling as well as arousing him. He stared at the ceiling and counted backward from forty.

She pressed her mouth to his stomach, rubbed her face in the curling black hair that dusted his skin. “Mmm,” she murmured, the sound of her
voice and the drift of her breath making him lose count at about twenty-nine.

“Izzy,” he groaned. “There's only one condom left. Hadn't we better pace ourselves?”

She licked his belly button, then blew on the moist trail.

Twenty-nine, twenty-nine, twenty-nine,
he thought.

She tossed her hair over her bare shoulder and winked at him. “Tonight maybe. But tomorrow one of us will have to go to another town and buy more safety.”

His heart stuttered, and he forgot to count. “Because?”

“Because one more time isn't going to be enough for me.” She paused, and uncertainty flickered over her face. “Will it be for you?”

Her skin slid along his as she took a deep breath, then waited for his answer. How could a woman like Isabelle have so little confidence?

“After what just happened,
enough
is no longer in my vocabulary.” He held open his arms.

The relief in her smile, the way she came to him with no hesitation made his belly roll up toward his heart. There was something about Isabelle that called to the caretaker in Klein. The way she cuddled against him like a child made him want to hold her whenever vulnerability shadowed her eyes.

He'd come here to confront her with what he'd discovered. But suddenly he wanted her to confide in him, to trust him with a secret, even two.

“Did you know that Serafina makes the best homemade pizza in the state?” he asked.

“I didn't. But then, how many Italians live in Tennessee?”

“You'd be surprised.” He kissed her hair and disentangled himself from her arms.

The uncertainty returned to her eyes. “Where are you going?”

“To order pizza. Murph will bring it over.”

“Oh. Sure. If you're hungry, go ahead.”

He raised a brow. “Aren't you hungry?”

“Not for food.”

“Lame line, Izzy.” He sat down on the bed and ran his fingers through her hair. He couldn't stop touching her even if he wanted to. “Do you mind that I call you Izzy? Everyone can't call you Isabelle. It's a mouthful.”

“My family calls me Belle. The world calls me Isabelle.” She turned her head and pressed her mouth to his knuckles. “I like it when you call me Izzy. No one else ever has.”

He kissed her, long and thoroughly, then stroked her shoulder for a while. He'd never get enough of the sweet, scented softness of her skin.

“Aren't you going to phone Serafina?” she asked.

“Nah. If you aren't hungry, I don't need anything. I can eat when I get home.”

“You should eat. Go ahead and order.”

“I can't sit here and stuff my face while you watch.”

“I suppose I can manage a piece.”

He was shamelessly manipulating her. Klein knew it, yet he did it anyway. After what he'd read on the Internet that afternoon, he was afraid. Afraid
if he told her he knew her secret she'd deny it, admit it, leave him or make him leave. But what scared him the most was that he wanted to help her more than he'd ever wanted to help anyone, and he had no idea how.

“Great,” he allowed, and picked up the phone.

While he dialed, then waited for Serafina to get her order pad, he watched Isabelle get dressed. He was fascinated by the way she moved, the precision with which she picked up his far-flung clothes and smoothed them as she laid them on the bed. Serafina yelled,
“Sceriffo!”
twice before he remembered what he wanted to order.

When he hung up, Isabelle was staring out the window, braiding her hair. “All set?” she asked without turning around.

“Yeah.”

The need to go to her was as overwhelming as his need to help her, so he crossed the room and together they contemplated the moon. She leaned back against his chest and pulled his arms around her, crossing his hands over her belly. Something deep inside him shifted, and his throat went thick. He glanced around the apartment.

Tousled sheets, kitchen table spread with papers, his clothes folded and waiting for him on the bed.

Just like his white picket fence and wraparound porch, his funky kitchen, sad-eyed dog and well-stocked library, this apartment made him feel at ease. Maybe he was beginning to fit into Pleasant Ridge at last.

“Gabe?”

“Hmm?”

“You don't mind me calling you that, do you?” She echoed his question.

Amazingly he didn't. “Most people call me Klein. A few call me Gabe. Only my mother calls me Gabriel.”

“Let me guess, whenever she's mad at you.”

“No, all the time. It's embarrassing for a guy of my size to have the name of an angel.”

“When I first heard your name, I didn't think it fit you any better than Isabelle fit me. But now I know better.” She turned in his arms, slipped her hands around his waist as easily as if she'd been doing it all her life. “I can't think of anyone more deserving of an angel's name. But I'll call you Gabe anyway.”

She went on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his jaw, then she laid her head on his chest. Funny, but now she seemed to be holding him, and he hadn't even known that he needed it.

They'd begun this relationship based on attraction, but if he wasn't very careful he'd end up in love with her, and Klein knew very well what would happen then.

He'd be the one to get hurt.

 

S
HE WAS ACTUALLY EATING
pizza after eight o'clock at night. Sacrilege in the bulimia handbook. But Belle couldn't work up any angst over it at the moment. She was too happy.

The loneliness that had been her constant companion all her life faded when she was with Gabe. She forgot so many things when she looked into his eyes. She remembered what it felt like to touch him,
to be a part of him and have him be a part of her. The wonder of him made all the problems and secrets in her life recede. Though she had no doubt they would thunder back to the surface soon enough.

“You were worried that sex would ruin our friendship?” He took a fifth slice of pizza and cocked a brow. “Does it feel ruined?”

With the scent of him still on her skin she had a hard time focusing on friendship. But as she considered his question, Belle realized she felt comfortable, at ease, at home for the first time since she'd left home—and it was because of Gabe.

“No,” she admitted. “In fact—”

“It's enhanced,” he finished, sounding as shocked as she was. “I always thought I made a better friend than a lover.”

“Then, you must be quite a friend.”

He caught her meaning immediately. “Thank you.”

He tossed his crust into the box. It fell in the middle of the other four crusts, which were all that was left of a cheese-and-pepperoni. Belle had eaten three slices of her own—crusts and all.

“Didn't anyone ever tell you that crusts give you curly hair?”

“What would I do with curly hair?”

She glanced at his crew cut and smirked. “Good point.”

“I could grow it out until I have a ponytail. Get an earring, a tattoo.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see it. Very you. I might have
some pooka beads around here. Would you like to wear them?”

“Why don't you? With nothing else.”

Her body heated. His slightest look, the merest touch of his hands, a foolish innuendo, and she wanted him again.

“What's this?” He held up the script she'd been reading earlier.

“My script. Read it and weep. I wanted to.”

He skimmed the first page, his forehead twisting into a frown. The second page had him scowling. After the third, he slammed the script on the table and growled. “I don't think so.”

“Weren't you the one who told me
Baywatch
meets Mayberry? Well, you were right.”

“Bully for me. That's a disgrace, Izzy. You're better than that.”

Though his defense warmed her, still she had to ask. “How would you know?”

“What?” He glanced up from the script.

“That I'm better than that. Maybe
that's
all I am. All I'll ever be.”

“You believe all you've got to give the world is a few jiggles of those breasts and a choice view of your ass?”

“It's worked pretty well so far.”

“I thought you wanted more.”

“I do. But how am I going to get it if all anyone sees is…?” She stabbed a finger at the script.

“By fighting for it. By proving you're more, instead of letting them make you into less.”

“How?”

“By
being
Sheriff Janet Hayes the way you imagine her to be.”

Hope spread through Belle, driving out the lingering despair that had weighted her heart since she'd opened the package and read the first page of the script. “You think I can?”

“I know you can. But that script has got to go.”

“Well, there are some parts that could work, if they'd nip a little here and tuck a little there.”

His smile was like sunshine across a mountain peak covered with snow. “You gonna rewrite that script, Isabelle?”

“Rewrite?” She blinked. “Me?”

“You see anyone else?”

“But—but I can't.”

“Who said?”

You don't have to worry about spellin' no more, Belle. The ABCs won't matter once they get a gander at your face and body. Stick with your strengths, girl. And they ain't in that pretty head of yours.

“I'm not a very good speller,” she admitted.

“Is that all? Neither is half the world.”

Belle
wanted
to do what Klein suggested, but she was afraid. Afraid she'd be no good. Afraid everyone would laugh at her—again. Afraid she'd just prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only thing she had to give was something that mattered not at all.

“When you can't spell, you appear ignorant.”

“If you don't even try, then you are.” He shoved the script to her side of the table. “Write down your ideas, then I'll tell you what I think.”

She hesitated, and he reached across the table to cover her hand with his. She lifted her gaze from the damned script to his beloved face. “You can trust me, Izzy.”

As she stared into his eyes she had an odd feeling he was asking for more than a first look at her writing skills. She was tempted, not for the first time, to spill the whole sorry mess of her life. But she was afraid of that, too.

What man would want all that baggage? If he knew she was crazy as well as ignorant, ugly beneath the beautiful, defective in a way there was no fixing, would he ever touch her again?

She couldn't take that chance. He made her feel too special, and she needed that right now. She needed him.

So she smiled and turned her hand around to clasp his. Then she gave him one thing, so he wouldn't search for all the others.

“Got a pencil?”

 

K
LEIN CLEANED THE KITCHEN
while Izzy scribbled madly on the script from hell. When he'd read what they expected her to do on television he'd wanted to rip the thing into bits and then start them on fire. Could those morons possibly be unaware of the gem they had in her?

He finished putting everything away and sat on the couch. Isabelle continued to work as if alone in the room. She either didn't notice, or didn't mind, his staring. And why would she? Being stared at was part of her job. For some reason, that annoyed him more today than it had in the past. He didn't
want anyone staring at her but him, and that kind of thinking could get him into trouble.

“There.” She dropped the pencil and pushed back from the table. Her face held a note of wonder, as if she couldn't quite believe she'd done it.

“Finished?

“With the first scene.” She took the few steps between the table and the living area, then offered the script to him.

He took it and patted the couch at his side. She folded herself onto the seat, cuddling against him as though having done it for most of her life. His arm curled around her in the same way.

A flash from outside made Klein glance out the half-open window. Must be a storm coming, though he hadn't heard of it on the news. Well, he didn't plan to go out for several hours, anyway, and Clint had a doggie door at home. Klein began to read.

Several chuckles and quite a few outright guffaws later, he was done. He placed the papers in his lap and glanced at Isabelle. Apprehension darkened her brown eyes nearly to black.

“It's good,” he said. “Very, very good.”

“Really?”

“You heard me laugh. I wasn't kidding. You've got a sense of comedic timing that the idiots who wrote this would sell their souls to have.”

Isabelle's smile was joyous, but it faltered almost immediately. “Now what do I do?”