to hide the aging process.
It would verge on blasphemy if that had happened to Cade, she thought. Given that he was still living here in Crenshaw, however, it was probably inevitable.
And why would you care if he’s fat and bald?
She would, she realized. Something about schoolgirl dreams and first loves. Even if Cade had never known about either.
She debated turning around and going back to her car. She had come here to see Hoyt, and it was obvious he was no longer employed by the county. Cade would probably know no more about the history of the house she was living in than she did.
Despite that logical conclusion, she turned the knob and pushed the heavy door inward. The kid at the desk looked to be about the same age as Cade the last time she’d seen him. A high-school senior, he’d soon left the county, heading to Tuscaloosa and a football scholarship at the University of Alabama.
Blythe, who had been twelve at the time, had grieved with all the emotion she’d been capable of. Which, as she remembered it, had been quite a lot.
That had been her first experience with loss. Although the memory of that pain had faded with the passing years and especially with the reality of true loss, within her chest stirred a shred of the apprehension she would have felt as a pre-adolescent had she known she was about to come face-to-face with Cade Jackson.
“Help you?” the young deputy asked.
“Sheriff Jackson, please?”
“May I ask what your inquiry is in reference to?”
At least the kid had been well trained. The question was both polite and efficient. Score one for Sheriff Jackson.
Tell him I’m trying to discover if my house might be haunted.
Since she couldn’t divulge the truth, she said, “I’m trying to get in touch with Hoyt Lee.”
The kid held her eyes a moment, his assessing. Then he reached for the phone on the desk in front of him, holding the receiver in the same hand he used to punch in a couple of numbers.
“Lady out here wants to talk to you about locating Sheriff Lee.”
He listened, lips pursing slightly at whatever was said by the person on the other end of the line. His eyes met hers again as he nodded in response to what he’d been told.
He put down the phone and nodded toward another glass-topped door at the end of a short hall. “You can go on in. Sheriff’s expecting you.”
“Thanks.”
She had taken only a couple of steps when the door she was headed toward opened. A man stepped through it and out into the hall. Although the overhead light cast a shadow on his face, his body in the light-colored uniform he wore was silhouetted against the darkness behind it.
If anything, Cade was leaner than when he’d played quarterback for the Davis County Warriors. The shoulders were still as broad. His height the same, of course.
As he walked toward the well-lit reception area, her mouth went dry. Her first thought was that he hadn’t changed at all, but he had, of course.
The features that had been almost too fine at eighteen had strengthened. The straight nose had at some point been broken, so that a narrow ridge marred its perfection. The lips were thinner, more mature. More masculine, she conceded.
And far more sensual.
She was shocked by the thought. More shocked by the physical reaction that had produced it.
Cade Jackson had been a good-looking boy. He was a compellingly attractive man.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had responded to a man in this way. Other than John, of course. And John had been dead for almost a year.
Maybe this was simply a natural progression in the long process of grieving. Maybe nature had decided it was time she began to notice members of the opposite sex again.
Sex.
Something else she hadn’t thought about in a long time, she realized. And didn’t want to think about right now.
Especially not as the man who had epitomized every adolescent daydream she’d ever had advanced toward her across the room, holding out his hand. If Ada Pringle’s rudeness could reduce her to an adolescent state, what effect would placing her hand into Cade’s have?
“Cade Jackson.”
It was obvious he didn’t remember her. But then, she was very different from the twelve-year-old she’d been when he’d left Crenshaw. Maybe she should have been flattered that he didn’t make the connection.
“Blythe Wyndham.” She put her fingers in his, aware of their calloused hardness.
His handshake was firm and brief, without any of the cheesy lingering hold men sometimes used to prolong contact with an attractive woman.
Because he doesn’t find you attractive?
“Wyndham?” A tiny furrow appeared between the dark brows.
His eyes hadn’t changed either, she realized. Surrounded by thick, dark lashes, they were an unusual blue-green, almost aquamarine. Their paleness contrasted to the darkness of his skin, still deeply tanned despite the season.
“Née Mitchell,” she offered, and then wondered if he would even know what that meant.
“Blythe Mitchell. Of course. I heard you were back.”
She waited for the obligatory expression of sympathy, but he didn’t offer one. Maybe the town gossip hadn’t provided him with the information about her husband’s death. Or maybe he’d forgotten it.
She became aware that he, too, was waiting. After all, she had asked to talk to him.
“I have what may seem a strange request.”
The lips she’d just thought of as being sensual quirked slightly at the corners and were quickly controlled. “I doubt it’s any stranger than most of the ones we get in here.”
He glanced at the kid at the desk, who, Blythe realized, had been hanging on their every word. Despite the convenient excuse Ada Pringle had suggested, Blythe didn’t want it spread around that she was investigating the town’s most notorious murder. That would only provoke more gossip about her situation, something she’d had enough of.
“Do you think we could talk in your office?”
She knew by the momentary hesitation before he answered that she’d taken Cade by surprise. It took only a second or two for him to recover. He turned, using his hand to direct her toward the hallway and the still-open door.
She stepped past him, once again aware of him physically. Of his size. Of the faint aroma of soap or aftershave that seemed to cling to his body along with the scent of laundered cotton.
She wondered who did his laundry. Maybe he had a wife, someone who had taken the time to lovingly put that knife-edge crease into the khaki pants.
Then, concentrating on what she’d come here for, she determinedly banished any thought of Cade Jackson, the man. He was simply the current sheriff of Davis County.
That was the only role she was now interested in having him play in her life. She had long ago outgrown the other.
His office was small, but neat. There were only two chairs, a battered leather swivel on the far side of the desk—obviously Cade’s—and a straight-back wooden one, very like the chairs in the library, on the other. Blythe waited until he entered behind her, leaving the door open. She watched as he crossed the room to stand behind his desk. He gestured, indicating that she should sit down.
“Jerrod said you want to get in touch with Hoyt Lee.” He had waited until she was seated before he settled into his own chair. “That doesn’t seem such a strange request to me, although I would think Miz Ruth would have been