A Sheriff in Tennessee (5 page)

“So you took him home.”

“Someone had to.”

That single sentence said more about Klein than any FBI profile. He'd adopted a gun-shy hound dog because he thought someone had to—probably because he knew what would happen to the dog if no one did. He wrapped his gun in a bandanna and hid it in a milk pail to soothe a poor beast's fear.

And she'd accused him of wrecking the animal. Belle—who ought to know better than to judge folks based on how they appeared. She'd met enough people who saw Blond, Busty Model and assumed brain dead followed. Just because Klein looked big and strong and macho didn't mean that he was a puppy-kicking son of a bitch.

“So, why Clint?”

He glanced up from his frowning perusal of the bandage box. Belle reached over and plucked out two. “This should do it.”

Slow and sure, he accepted the offering and picked at the ends to open them. For such a large man he had nimble fingers, and he was able to pull the annoying tabs on the wrappers much more easily than Belle ever could have. His dexterity made her wonder just how talented he would be with other tasks—like unbuttoning buttons, unzipping zippers, unsnapping snaps.

Her hormones were getting out of hand here, so she offered her arm before he could reach for her again. As he positioned the bandages over her scrape, she stared at the top of his shorn head and resisted the urge to run her free hand over the dark stubble. She'd never seen such short hair. Would it be soft like the hair on his chest, or bristly like the hair on his chin the morning after?

“You remember
The Beverly Hillbillies,
don't you?” He glanced up, eyebrows drawn together.

Belle blinked, hoping her lustful thoughts did not show on her face.

“Maybe you're too young,” he said.

She snorted her opinion of that. He returned his attention to her arm, but not before she caught the glimmer of a beautiful smile. Belle never would have considered that she of all people would lust after someone on the basis of appearance alone. It was embarrassing.

“The hound dog was named Duke,” he continued.

“I remember. But he wasn't gun-shy.”

“No. He was movement challenged. Did you ever see that dog move any faster than slow motion in reverse?”

Belle searched her memory. “Not that I recall. I don't see how that applies to Clint, though.”

“It doesn't. But when I got him I thought he could use a tough-guy name. Couldn't hurt, right? So I came up with Duke, which made me think of John Wayne, and then—”

“Clint Eastwood!”

“Exactly.” He patted her bandaged arm as if she were a child, and stepped back.

“Why didn't you name him Dirty Harry? He'd be tough enough then.”

“No self-respecting, small-town law enforcement officer would own a dog named Dirty Harry. That would give folks the wrong idea.”

“‘Go ahead, make my day'?”

“Yeah. We frown on that kind of attitude in tiny-town Tennessee.”

“Is that lesson number two?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Does that mean you're going to help me?”

His warm blue eyes cooled. “Did I ever have any choice?”

Belle stifled a sigh. “I want you to
want
to help me.”

“We don't always get what we want, Ms. Ash.”

“We're back to ‘Ms. Ash'? I thought you were going to call me Isabelle.”

“That name doesn't fit you.”

She blinked. She'd always thought the same thing. “Uh, well, my family calls me Belle.”

As had everyone else who “knew her when.” Though she, too, thought of herself as Belle, she'd never liked the nickname, especially when
big
preceded it, as it so often had.

He shook his head. “You're not a Belle, either.”

Their eyes met, and she felt a camaraderie with Klein she couldn't recall having felt with anyone else. What was his name?
Gabriel.
He certainly didn't seem like an angel. “Klein” fit him better. Strong, succinct, with a soft center. Yes, Klein was the perfect name for Klein.

They were still staring into each other's eyes, and suddenly the moment became something more than a mere look. The air seemed difficult to breathe—hot, almost steamy.

She was being silly. She might be attracted to him, but he considered her an annoyance, nothing more. Belle had spent most of her life as an annoy
ance to virtually all the men she cared about. First to her three younger brothers, who were mortified to have a sister like her, then to any boy she might have a crush on. Big Belle liking him was an embarrassment to any teenaged boy, as if her affection somehow made him less instead of more.

Of course, things were different now, but Belle had never forgotten how it felt to be rejected, and she didn't ever want to be again. Since Klein appeared to care for brains more than beauty and he thought she was a dim decoration, not the brightest light on the Christmas tree, she would not make a fool of herself by believing a look was anything more than a look.

Belle jumped down from the sink just as Klein pushed away from the wall. She bumped into him. He stumbled back, hands coming up to catch her and clasping her elbows.

“Ouch!” she squeaked as his palm slapped against her scraped, though bandaged, skin.

Immediately his hold gentled, but he didn't let her go. Her nose practically pressed to the firm wall of his chest, she raised her head to find him staring at her with his familiar scowl.

“Izzy,” he muttered.

“Huh?”

“You look like an Izzy.”

Klein's mellow Georgia drawl caused a resurgence of goose bumps on her skin. When his gaze lowered to her mouth, she caught her breath.

“You can call me Izzy if you like,” she whispered.

Something flickered in his eyes, then was gone
so fast she couldn't identify the emotion. He released her with a little shove, then slipped from the bathroom far too quickly for a man of his size.

Belle stared at the ugly-as-sin velvet wallpaper while the pain of rejection washed over her. A long time might have gone by since a man had turned away, but the feelings were as familiar as her favorite shade of lip gloss. One touch had made her forget all her good intentions.

Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She had learned the hard way that showing people they'd hurt her only made them hurt her all the more.

 

W
HAT IN HELL
had come over him?

Klein stalked down the hall and out the front door, putting as much distance as he could between Isabelle and him. He would not,
could not,
think of her as Izzy. In that direction lay far too much danger.

Because Izzy was the name of the tousled, bleeding, vulnerable woman in his bathroom, the woman he'd rescued, the one who'd needed him. For Izzy he'd felt far too strong a liking, far too intense a physical longing.

No. Better to think of her as Isabelle, as she'd asked. Isabelle, he could resist. Isabelle, he could work with and not want.

Klein always got into trouble when he thought a woman needed him.

He sank down on the top porch step, and Clint heaved himself to his feet with a groan. The dog's youthful body housed an ancient soul.

Clint padded the short distance across the porch and laid his snout on Klein's shoulder. His sigh of commiseration blew bubbles of drool into Klein's ear, which was the most action Klein had seen since long before moving to Pleasant Ridge.

He sat up straighter at the thought.
That
was why he'd responded to Isabelle as he had, not because he'd lost his ever-lovin' mind.

Clint lifted his head an instant before a soft footfall announced her arrival. Klein didn't bother to turn around. He would let her set the tone of the conversation.

“Will you help me?”

Klein sighed. What had he expected? Hot sex and eternal devotion?
Right.
She wanted something from him; she wasn't going to rest until she got it.

She must have sensed he was attracted to her, even though he'd thought he'd done a pretty good job of hiding it. Hell, he'd had years of practice. But some women could smell a man's interest a mile away. His mother was one of them. Obviously Isabelle was another.

“I already said that I'd help you.”

“Because you have to.”

“Doing that won't make me want to.”

“Doing what?”

She sounded genuinely confused, so he turned and looked at her. His movement made Clint meander back to his cool corner, where he collapsed with a groan that might rival Virgil's on a chilly morning in December.

Isabelle's face appeared as uncertain as her voice. Well, she was an actress, or so she said.

“Come now, Ms. Ash. The room
was
small, and your breasts are…” He let his gaze wander over them.
Magnificent,
he thought. What he said was “Big.”

She gasped.

“But how many times did you have to brush them against me?”

Her mouth opened and closed, then opened again. “You think I—I—”

“Didn't you?”

“No! Yuck! How disgusting. I'd never—”

“As I said before, you don't need to do that. In fact, you'd be better off to save it for someone who cares—like your boyfriend.”

“I don't have a boyfriend.”

He found that hard to believe. Years of answering domestic dispute calls had taught him that women like Isabelle usually had big, bad-ass boyfriends ready to crush to a pulp anyone who looked at them crosswise.

“Whatever.” He shrugged as if the news about no boyfriend hadn't made his heart beat a little faster. “Save it. I have no choice but to help you.”

He saw once more a hint of vulnerability in her eyes, and he could have sworn her lip trembled. He felt like a jerk. Maybe because he was. But he'd been played for a fool too many times before, and he couldn't bear to be played for one again.

“Some woman really did a number on you, didn't she.”

His gaze shot to hers. Any trace of vulnerability was gone; shrewd intelligence and a hint of sym
pathy had replaced it. He didn't need anyone to feel sorry for him, least of all someone like her.

He stood and moved closer, crowding into her space, forcing her to tilt her head up to see him, using his body to intimidate as she'd used hers to ensnare. He had to give her credit—she refused to retreat; she did not glance away.

“What the hell,” he growled. “It's no skin off my nose if I teach you everything I know.”

And maybe, just maybe, if he taught her about the people and the place as well as the job, she'd fall in love with Pleasant Ridge, too. Maybe she'd leave it, and him, alone.

But as he gazed into her determined brown eyes, Gabe Klein knew such a hope was as much a fantasy as every other hope he'd ever had.

S
HE'D HAD MORE GRACIOUS
offers. But since Klein's grudging acquiescence was most likely the best she was going to get, Belle snapped it up before he could change his mind.

“Terrific.”

Stepping away from his intimidating height and breadth, she gave him a dazzling smile to show she held no hard feelings over his insulting belief that she'd been using her body to get what she wanted. Not that she didn't secretly harbor them—but she knew better than to let such feelings show. Pissy women did not get far in a man's world.

She wasn't so slow that she didn't notice Klein had avoided her question about women by changing the subject to the one she wanted to hear. Some woman
had
done a number on him, and Belle was getting to pay the price.

She dodged around Klein's exceptional body and skipped down the porch steps, turning at the bottom to look up at him. He studied her with the usual scowl. “What time should I meet you tomorrow? And where?”

His eyes narrowed, and she had a suspicion he was going to tell her where to go, right now, in
stead. But he closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again.

“Six o'clock in front of the station.”

“Six o'clock in the morning?”

He smirked. “Problem?”

“No.” She'd always been an early riser. Her mama would have had it no other way. “I'll just have to go for my run at night instead of in the morning.”

“You run at six a.m.?”

“Someone has to.”

He didn't crack a smile. “No, no one has to. You don't need to beat yourself up jogging. Why don't you let it slide while you're here?”

Just the thought of letting her exercise program slide was enough to make her edgy.

“Do you let your weight lifting program slide?” she snapped.

“What program?”

“Don't tell me you got muscles like those riding in a cop car.”

“Okay, I won't tell you.”

Belle frowned. “Seriously. You have to lift weights.”

“No one ever told me that rule. Is it in the life handbook?”

“Ha-ha. Explain to me how you stay in that kind of shape if you don't lift weights. You don't look like a runner.”

“I never run when I can walk. Never stand when I can sit. And I never, ever lift something as foolish as a barbell. What's the point?”

“Muscles? Cardiovascular health? Ability to run down a suspect if the need arises?”

“I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to chase anyone.”

“I suppose you just shout ‘Halt!' and they do.”

He shrugged. “Pretty much. The gun does help.” His probing eyes met hers. “Didn't anyone ever tell you that walking is as good for the heart as running? And it's a lot easier on the knees.”

Someone
had
told her that; she just didn't believe it. How could strolling possibly be as worthwhile as pounding the pavement? But as she let her gaze wander over Klein, for the first time she wondered.

“Okay, maybe you don't lift weights, but you must lift something.”

“Yeah, doughnuts to my mouth.”

He had to be kidding, yet his face was as deadpan as his voice.

“You'll see tomorrow,” he continued. “Six a.m. in front of the station. I'll bring the doughnuts.”

With that parting comment, he whistled to Clint, nodded to Belle and disappeared inside.

Belle strolled to the road, glanced back at the house, considered the doughnuts and began to jog toward Pleasant Ridge.

She slept well that night, her window open, a pleasant mountain breeze blowing across her bed, across her. A long time had passed since she'd been able to sleep beneath an open window. She hadn't realized she'd missed it.

When her travel alarm went off at five-thirty, the sky was still dark, though the eastern horizon glowed a lighter shade of blue behind the indigo
hills. She sat on her bed, watching the sky and the mountains as the cool dawn air ruffled her hair. If not for the dreams of Gabe Klein still tangled in her brain, she would say she'd found the greatest peace she'd known since leaving home.

Unfortunately, those images of Klein
were
disturbing. She'd slept well, but she'd slept with him. Her brothers would say she needed to get laid, preferably by Klein, and then all the fantasies would go away. They'd no doubt be right. Thus far in her life, Belle had never found real sex as enthralling as the illusion.

She headed into her tiny bathroom and stepped beneath the tepid, trickling shower spray. The apartment felt more like home every day. Little things like lack of water pressure took her right back to the foothills of Virginia. Those memories made her feel like a kid again. Too bad her youth was not something she cared to recall. In those days she had been uncertain, off center, alone.

Alone.
That could explain her unreasonably strong attraction to a man she should not be attracted to. She was lonely. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing she had not lived with all her life.

She could not sleep with Klein. He already thought she was a dim-brained tramp. She wasn't going to prove him right, no matter how much she might want to touch the chest he kept hidden beneath the dirt-brown uniform and the badge.

Twenty minutes later, still-damp hair slicked into a ponytail and face devoid of makeup, Belle stood in front of a dark and desolate police station. The morning air was already heating up, despite the fact
that the sun had not yet broken above the mountains.

She'd considered wearing shorts and a tank top to offset the coming spring day but had opted, instead, for capri-length khaki trousers and an oversize white T-shirt. The less attention she drew to herself the better. She was nervous enough already, without having people point and stare at her all day. Even though her presence in Pleasant Ridge was supposed to be a secret for the time being, she knew better than to count on that.

Expecting Klein to arrive in a squad car or maybe even a pickup truck, she didn't at first notice the solitary figure ambling in from Highway B. Once she did, she just watched Klein move.

He walked the way he did everything else—slow, sure, determined. The man was like the mountains at his back. Did anything ever move him to anger, to joy, to passion?

“‘Morning,” he said as he crossed the deserted street.

Annoyed at her inability to keep her mind off things it had no business thinking about, Belle blurted, “Where're the damn doughnuts?”

He laughed, the sound loud in the still of the morning, but comforting just the same. His laugh, too, was like him—strong and deep, uncommon—and she found herself smiling in response. Maybe today wouldn't be so bad after all.

“Lesson number three.” Klein pointed down the street. “To know the job, you have to know the people. Watch Pleasant Ridge wake up.”

Lights sparked against the mountain backdrop, like stars coming awake in the sky.

“Lucinda Jones,” Klein murmured as he pointed to the bakery. “Her husband died when she was forty, and she never remarried. Her kids scattered, and she's devoted herself to the business. It's been standing there since Pleasant Ridge was little more than four houses and a general store. There's been a Jones baking in that kitchen for the better part of two centuries.”

The back of Belle's neck prickled. Imagine—the same family doing the same thing for two hundred years.

“If none of her kids come back and take over, she'll be the last,” Klein said. “And that'll be a shame.”

Belle nodded in agreement just as her stomach growled, protesting her supper choice the night before—a can of tuna eaten in front of the TV during the six o'clock news, before she spent the rest of the evening making notes about her first day in Pleasant Ridge.

She glanced at Klein to see if he'd heard, but he still stared at the lights of the bakery. “Thursday is cherry turnover day. My favorite.”

“No doughnuts?”

“You'll learn, Ms. Ash—”

“Isabelle,” she said automatically, then winced at the memory of the last time they'd had this conversation. Too close in too small a room; gently touching; secretly yearning; his heat and his scent surrounding her, enticing her. She didn't want to
remember his deep voice calling her Izzy. She'd already remembered it all night long.

“Isabelle—”

He lowered his head, a gesture that made her think of lords and ladies, courtly manners, times long past, then continued as if she had just invited him to call her Isabelle for the very first time. Perhaps he didn't even recollect what still haunted her.

“You'll learn that being a cop in Pleasant Ridge is a whole lot different from being a cop anywhere else. Right down to the doughnuts.”

“Is that why you're here?” she asked. “Because it's different?”

He shot her an unreadable glance. “What does it matter why I'm here?”

“I need to know why a man like you, a man with your background, your training, would give it all up and come here.”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“It goes to character.”

“Mine?”

“And mine. For the show.”

“I see.” He rocked back on his heels, but he didn't answer.

Belle stifled the urge to sigh or snarl. She had a feeling she would be dragging information out of this man for the next few weeks; therefore, she'd better learn how to do it without annoying him, regardless of how much he annoyed her.

“So, why
did
you give it all up and come here?”

“Give what up?”

Aargh!
Belle took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Sometimes that helped.

“The excitement, the danger, the opportunities for advancement?”

He shook his head. “The violence, the drugs, the kids with guns. A never-ending wave of people I couldn't help.”

Any lingering sense of annoyance fled as understanding dawned on her like the sun bursting over the far mountains. Klein—bless him—had just handed Belle the perfect motivation for her character to come to a little town in Tennessee.

He was already walking down Longstreet Avenue without her. Belle hurried to catch up. “Do you think you can help people here?”

“Hope so. This is the end of the line for me.”

“End of the line? What does that mean?”

“If I can't find a reason here, I'm not going to find one.”

“A reason for what?”

“Being me.”

Belle stopped; Klein kept right on walking.

“Wait!” she called. He paused, turned. “I don't understand.”

“Never mind. I get maudlin when I'm hungry.”

Maudlin?
What small-town sheriff used the word
maudlin
in conversation? What
man
used it? A man like Klein, who was no doubt better educated than anyone Belle had ever met.

Belle studied Klein's profile, wondering how much he would tell her about himself, today or any other day. Before she could come to a conclusion, irate barking began behind the door of the building they stood in front of. Klein mumbled what sounded like a curse and walked more quickly than
she'd ever seen him walk. Belle glanced up to read the sign, just as a light came on upstairs.

Civil War Museum. Well, that sounded interesting. She'd have to check out the place later.

Headlights blazing, a truck roared into town, then parked in front of the grocery store. Belle caught up to Klein just as he began to talk, as if he hadn't even noticed she was no longer at his side.

“Jesse Wright, son of Joseph Wright—”

Belle's gaze skidded over the Wright Grocery Store sign and back to Klein's pensive face.

“Jesse would like to move to the big city, as would most of the young people here, but he doesn't have the money for college or the training for any other job except the one he has—driving the truck to Knoxville and bringing back produce. His father did it before him and his father before him.”

“And before that?”

Klein slid a glance her way. “Before that, they used a horse and wagon. But the son brought the supplies and the father ran the store.”

“I'm beginning to see a pattern here.”

“I thought you might.”

“What if there's a daughter but no son?”

Another truck pulled out of the alleyway next to the newspaper office and headed out of town. “Cassidy Tyler owns and operates the
Pleasant Ridge Gazette.
Cass is the daughter you asked about. Runs the paper mostly on her own now. The circulation in this neck of the woods isn't big enough to warrant a publisher
and
a truck driver. Her father started the
Gazette
in 1984. She's a newcomer.”

“Nearly twenty years here and she's a newcomer?”

“She wasn't born here.” He spread his hands. “Newcomer.”

“Will her children be considered ‘from here'?”

“Of course. Although I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Cass to have any children. She wants more than Pleasant Ridge. Always has. A lot of folks want out.” His gaze drifted to the mountains once more. “And then there're some folks who just want in.”

Like you,
she thought.

“What did Pleasant Ridge do for news before 1984?”

“Picked it up at the back fence like any self-respecting small town. Gossip has always moved much faster than any printing press.”

“Don't I know it,” Belle murmured. Gossip moved faster in large towns, too, and in the entertainment industry even faster.

“Been the subject of nasty gossip, have you, Isabelle?”

She shrugged, not willing to elaborate on her past experiences with the press. She'd learned to keep her mouth shut about anything she didn't want to see splashed across the front page of every smut rag in the country.

“There was a monthly newspaper,” Klein went on. “Owner passed on. No son or daughter, so Tyler bought the building, then began publishing a weekly. Most folks didn't think it was necessary. They'd been doing without a weekly paper for centuries. But Tyler came from a family of newspa
permen and he knew what he was doing. Took a while, but he won 'em over. Now I don't think there's a house in town or a farm outside that doesn't get the
Gazette.
”