shore of the Red Thunder River fifteen years ago. She made him feel real and solid. She made him feel needed.
A man couldn’t ask for more.
“You weren’t supposed to see until I was ready.”
He held her at arm’s length and caged her gaze with his. He loved her eyes, the way they sparkled with life, the way they shone with love for him. “Well, now, I like what I see.”
She blushed and batted her fingers against his shoulder. “You’re impossible!”
Turning her head, she looked at the small round table in the middle of the kitchen floor. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
For the first time since he’d walked into the kitchen, he noticed the scene set for seduction. On crisp white linen, silverware gleamed in the late-afternoon light. The fancy cream and gold china that had once belonged to Taryn’s mother scintillated. Red candles in their crystal holders were ready to be lit. The fragrance of pink roses from the garden competed with the chili’s spice.
“What’s the occasion?”
Coyly, she fingered the gold sheriff’s star on his uniform shirt. “It’s Friday night. Do we need an occasion?”
Her soft smile and the deepening blue of her eyes were having their usual combustible effect on him. A wave of craving clawed at his insides. Even though Taryn’s chili was his favorite meal and her cherry pie was to die for, right now he’d skip the food for nourishment of the sensual kind. “You want me to leave and come back later?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “We can eat later.”
With swift ease, he scooped her into his arms and started toward the bedroom down the hall. “I promise I’ll be hungry.”
“I had everything planned.” A hint of disappointment colored her voice. She shrugged it away and a Mona Lisa smile soon graced her lips. “I may have a bit of news.”
“What kind of news?” Her full, pouty lips distracted him, so he kissed them and set a sweeping tide of desire surging through him. That he still wanted her this fiercely after seven years of marriage amazed him.
“It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait.”
But her voice had gone soft and her body molded itself to his with a liquid heat. Her arms twined at his neck and her fingers curled into his hair. And she kissed him back with such passion that his muscles quivered and weakened.
He placed her on the blue-and-white quilt in their bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, admiring her. Her skin bloomed with need for him. Her sexy blue eyes had gone dark and dreamy. She reached for the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head. That she still seemed unable to resist his advances after all this time struck him with wonder.
With a finger he traced the lace edge of her bra. The silk softness of her skin was a delight. The speeding of her breath caused an answering gallop of his pulse. He couldn’t resist the invitation of the pebbling of her nipples beneath the satiny fabric. Her soft sigh, the curling upward of her body to meet his touch as he thumbed one hard peak then the other made him acutely aware of the pulsating hardness of his body.
“Dinner can wait?” He hated to ruin her surprise when she’d worked so hard to set the scene.
She smiled at him in a way that told him she was fully aware of his desire for her and reached for him, bringing his face close to hers. In a voice raw and seductive, she said, “Dinner can wait.”
They came together in a kiss that could have melted the polar ice caps. Taryn was fumbling with the buttons of his shirt when the phone rang.
Both stopped mid-caress. Forehead rested against forehead. Breaths came in short, heated bursts.
“Don’t answer,” she said, clutching his shirt collar with a frantic hold.
“I have to.”
The shrill sound was a counterpoint to their racing pulses. Then suddenly her eyes showed both disappointment and acceptance. “Tad’s on duty.”
“I’m on call.”
He nibbled the lobe of one ear, but the ring of the phone was fast cooling his ardor. “I’ll make it up to you.”
Taryn bussed his cheek with a stiff peck. “I’ll go check on dinner.”
Heart heavy with regret, he picked up the receiver on the small night table beside the bed.
Before he could say anything, RoAnn McGarrity’s cutting voice chimed in. “Chance? Are you there?”
“I’m here, RoAnn.” Taryn reached for her T-shirt and pulled it back on. Quietly, she left the room and a sinking feeling settled in his stomach. “If you think you’re sending me anywhere now that I’m home, you’d better think again.”
RoAnn acted as the local sheriff’s office dispatcher. Folks kept their band radios tuned to the station frequency just to hear all the local gossip she managed to air over the waves.
“I know it’s been a long day for you and I wouldn’t ask except Tad ain’t got your skill at dealin’ with an incendiary temper like Billy Ray Brett’s, and besides, he’s yankin’ old Ruby Kramer out of a ditch again.”
“What’s with Billy Ray this time?”
“He’s mutatin’ coyotes into wolves again. Swears he saw one sniffin’ at his herd.” She snorted. “As if his one mangy beast makes a herd. He needs your reassurance there ain’t no wolf-release program active in these parts. Before nightfall—if you know what I mean.”
Yeah, he knew. If he didn’t handle this now, he’d be up handling it in the dead of night, and he had other plans for his evening.
Resigned, he said, “I’ll go soothe Billy Ray.”
He found Taryn in the kitchen. She accepted his arms around her, his kiss, but a skin of cool distance had grown between them. “I’ve got to go talk Billy Ray Brett out of hallucinating wolves. I won’t be long.”
Her smile had a sad quality to it. “I’ll be waiting.”
He jostled her hips against his. “It’ll give you time to finish your surprise.”
She nodded and turned to the chili.
Reluctantly, he stepped into the late afternoon’s skin-drenching humidity and into his cruiser.
As sheriff, keeping Gabenburg safe was his job, and Chance took pride in what he did—just as his mentor, Angus Conover, had taught him. He owed Angus and he owed Gabenburg for taking him in, but it wasn’t gratitude that drove him to serve and protect as much as a genuine caring for the place and the people. Still, some days, like today when he was bone-weary tired and wanted nothing more than a quiet evening at home with his wife, he yearned for a simple nine-to-five occupation.
He shook his head and mumbled, “You’d go stark raving mad inside a week.”
He had a loving wife, a job that fulfilled him and friends who accepted him as he was. What more could a guy ask for? He and Taryn had even talked of making a baby—which would be the icing on an already sweet cake.
She was the blue sky in his life, and his greatest fear was that one day, without quite knowing how, he’d mess up, that the needs of others would take him from Taryn one time too many, that he would lose her and his life all over again.
“Sheriff One.” RoAnn’s voice squawked over the radio. “Chance, are you there?”
As good as RoAnn was at coordinating calls, he could never get her to use the proper radio lingo. Chance keyed the mike. “Sheriff One. Go ahead.”
“Sam Wentworth just buzzed me. He’s out by Gator Park and thinks he’s found the safe that was heisted from Leggett’s Antiques yesterday.”
“Tad can check it out when he’s