how much are you paying?” he asked, smiling now at her.
She named an amount.
Eyebrows going up, he reached up and pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “Chérie, that is quite a bit of money. Are you sure you have your figures right?”
Leah gripped her hands together indecisively. “Actually, you see, that’s part of the money I was allotted in the proposal I worked up for the grant. I had to write out where the money would be used. I told them I would have someone mapping out a section of the safest handicapped-accessible routes and that her or his time would run that much.”
Surprised, Mark reevaluated the woman. “You have all of your facts pretty well laid out, I see,” he murmured.
The pale skin of her cheeks flushed a light pink. “I try to be prepared in everything and for any eventuality.”
Mark cocked his head studying her. “That sounds so ominous, chérie. Are you expecting a tornado or hailstorm while we’re out on the range?”
Leah laughed and shook her head before reaching up and pushing her hair back behind her ear. “No. No. I just meant, it’s good to be prepared. Especially where children are concerned. You can never be too careful.”
A soft pang of hurt echoed in her voice. He doubted she even realized she’d revealed that. Caught up in her vulnerability, he thought this is what always got him in trouble. Don’t worry about it, Mark, he warned himself. It’s your imagination.
“I’ll be glad to take the job,” he found himself saying.
However, it wasn’t for the job’s sake that he’d agreed, he realized, but to get to know this woman better.
Leah’s face brightened though a fleeting shadow of doubt touched her eyes. “Great! Then can we meet Monday to go over what I have planned for the camp-out?”
He should run now, not note how appealing the offer was. But it was too late. He’d been absorbed in her enthusiasm and fleeting hints of a deeper character within her. He wouldn’t back off now. No, he’d go for it.
How hard could it be after all? He’d simply hold her hand and walk her through what she wanted to know and then be done with it.
“Sounds good to me, chérie,” he murmured.
“Great!” Clapping her hands she smiled, a beautiful full smile of pleasure, and Mark suddenly wondered if he was setting himself up for something he was going to regret.
Chapter Two
It might be harder than he had thought, Mark mused, unnerved by the look on Sheriff Mitch McCade’s face as they stood in the middle of the main office.
“You’re doing what?”
Mitch McCade stared, slack-jawed at Mark.
“I said I’m going to need a leave of absence for a short time to map out the local areas…if that’s okay with you.” Mark shifted, cocking a hip as he waited for Mitch to answer.
Mitch slowly shook his head. “No, it’s not, Mark. You said you were taking Leah Thomas to map out the local areas.”
Every sound in the sheriff’s office died. Mark knew why. Every person had stopped to listen to the exchange between the two men. Mark scowled at his boss. “She needs someone to help her. And she’s paying me. It’s just a job.”
Mitch snorted. “It was the eyes, wasn’t it?”
“Mitch McCade!” Assistant Deputy Laura McCade, Mitch’s sister-in-law, yelled loud enough and with enough reproach to make Mitch flush and the entire office break into chuckles.
Glaring at his sister-in-law, Mitch said, “Stay out of it, Laura, or I’ll tell them all how you really ended up going into labor.”
Mark glanced over at Laura, who had turned the color of a rosy sunset. “Yeah, Sis, stay out of it.”
“Zach is going to hear about this,” she muttered good-naturedly.
“He’s my big brother but not my keeper,” Mitch said casually, smiling. Then he turned his attention back to the man in front of him. “Come with me, to my office.”
Mark nodded and followed his boss down the short, dark, narrow hallway. At twenty-nine, Mark was younger than Mitch McCade. The brawny man with the dark skin and hair spoke Spanish almost as well as a native speaker. After breaking a drug ring and discovering his former deputy sheriff had been the one running it in their area, Mitch hired his sister-in-law, Laura, the big-city detective, to assist him in the office.
Laura had finagled a job for her brother Mark.
Mark liked the job except for one small detail: it was what his father expected of him. After the way his father had raised them, Mark wanted nothing to do with that type of life. The memories were too harsh, too cold. His father had never been home and had been what was known as a hardnose both with work and with his family.
Still, Mark couldn’t help but hang around the Hill Creek County Sheriff’s Department since it seemed he had a natural knack for this sort of thing. Their boots echoed as they walked down the cracking linoleum floor.
Turning into Mitch’s office, Mark paused to close the door then dropped into a chair in front of the old wooden desk. It had been scratched up, used, abused, but still stood. Mark wouldn’t be surprised to find this was still the original desk from when this building had been built back in the late 1800s.
Mitch strode around his desk and sat down. Leaning back, he propped his feet up on the desk. Crossing his hands over his flat abdomen he said, “So, tell me what’s going on, Mark?”
Mark tossed his toothpick into the nearby dented metal receptacle and pulled out a small bottle from his pocket. Snagging a fresh toothpick, he slid it into his mouth before replacing the container within the confines of the material. “You know Leah, Mitch. Laura said with her baby duties and her stepdaughter, Angela, starting college she didn’t have the time to do a proper job of helping Leah out.”
When Mitch said nothing but continued to stare, Mark shifted in his chair and finally admitted, “You know how my sister is. She poured it on really thick how we just couldn’t let that poor fragile woman go out in the desert all alone, pointing out how many times I’d mentioned how helpless Leah Thomas looked.”
Mitch chuckled to Mark’s everlasting frustration. “She got to you, huh?”
“Just wait, Sheriff. My sister has been at me nearly thirty years. You, she only has been after a couple now.”
Mitch chuckled again.
“Besides, it was you she went with to the neighbor’s house.”
Mitch stopped laughing. “Yeah, well…your sister can certainly be sly when she wants to be. She was too far along to be running around like she did.”
Mark only smirked, not believing any of the story Mitch had. “You see why I want the leave?”
Mitch dropped his feet and leaned forward, resting his forearms on a stack of papers that lay haphazardly across his desk. “Partially. Let me ask you something else though, Walker.”
“Sure,” Mark agreed. “Shoot.”
Mitch studied him, his dark-brown eyes perusing every facet as if seeking a weakness or flaw. Mark didn’t like it when men did that. But with Mitch it was downright unnerving how well he could pick out the problems.
“You still running from God about some issues?”
Mark sighed. Dropping his gaze, he again admitted that Mitch had hit the head of the nail dead-on. “What does that matter?”
Leaning back in his chair, Mitch again crossed his arms over his abdomen though he didn’t prop up his booted feet this time. “If you’re still rebelling against your dad’s wishes out of pure