held back as much as she could. Occasionally she made eye contact with one sister or another, and once Doris Irene and her husband, William, waltzed past, and Hallie was convinced they were all wondering what Brady was doing with her instead of Kylie. When she caught a glimpse of Neely and Reese both watching them, she lowered her gaze to the center of Brady’s chest and wished once again that she was someplace else.
“Relax,” he murmured in her ear. “Surely you’re used to people looking at you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re a beautiful woman, and people tend to look at beautiful women.”
Tilting her head back, Hallie met his gaze. “Okay, I get it. Your job tonight—besides acting as a groomsman—is keeping the newly divorced bridesmaid from ruining everyone’s fun with her mood, right?”
He gazed down at her a long time. His blue eyes revealed nothing, but she had the sense that her words offended or irritated him. When he spoke, though, his tone was no different than before. “Trust me, I would be the last person in the county anyone would choose to entertain, flatter or even talk to anyone else.”
“And why is that?”
While he considered an answer, the music ended and so did the dance. He didn’t release her right away, but held her and looked at her and made her feel incredibly warm and tingly, until finally Del Barnett’s voice quieted the crowd.
“Reese wanted to sneak out of here, but Neely says she’s got three single sisters and she’s not going without throwing her bouquet. So all you unmarried ladies gather around up here, and all you single men be prepared to run.”
It seemed to Hallie that everyone was moving someplace except her and Brady. He was still just looking at her, and darned if she couldn’t pull her gaze away from his.
Abruptly he let her go. “Go on.”
“I’m not single.”
“You’re not married.”
“No, I’m divorced. There’s a difference.”
“Not enough to count. Go on, or your sisters will create a scene.”
Already she was dimly aware of Kylie and Bailey calling her name in unison. She looked at Brady, and he looked away, breaking the spell that held her. Without a word, she walked away and joined the group of women on the grass.
With her back to them, Neely gave the flowers a great toss, and they tumbled, stem over bloom, through the air straight at Hallie. She didn’t raise her hands, didn’t move, didn’t do a thing. When Kylie reached across and grabbed them before they hit the ground, Hallie looked back to where she’d left Brady.
He was gone.
He was a cold-hearted bastard.
Brady stood in the shadow of a clump of trees where no light could reach and watched as Neely and Reese said goodbye to their families. Neely hugged her mother, then her sisters, starting with Bailey and ending with Hallie. She was the only blonde in a family of brunettes, but it was more than her hair color that set her apart. She was lonely. Wounded.
And he wanted to take advantage of that.
Farewells said, Neely and Reese got into the waiting limousine, and the driver slowly pulled away. They were spending the night in Tulsa, then catching an early flight to the Caribbean. There they would be taken by boat to an isolated island where one of Reese’s friends from his pro baseball days was letting them use his beachfront estate. They weren’t planning to come back for three weeks—unless she decided just to stay forever, Neely had threatened.
As the limo disappeared from sight, the wedding guests began heading back to their dancing, visiting and celebrating. Hallie talked to her sisters for a few minutes and got hugs from both of them. Kylie tried to give her the bridal bouquet—probably with a joke about Hallie’s multiple marriages. Her family didn’t appear to have a clue how three divorces had affected her.
After refusing the flowers, Hallie left her sisters and headed toward the church. She passed within ten feet of where he stood, so close he could smell her fragrance on the warm night air. She spoke politely to guests going the other way, then crossed the street to her car, a flashy little blue convertible.
He waited until she’d driven away to move out of the shadows. His truck was parked down the block and around the corner, but he didn’t hurry. There was only one main road from Heartbreak to Buffalo Plains, and he knew where she was staying.
Plus, he needed time to talk himself out of what he wanted.
He was almost at his truck when a voice called, “Hey, Brady.”
He knew before he turned it was Jace Barnett. He was a couple of years older than Brady, Reese’s cousin and a detective with the Kansas City Police Department, and after Reese and Neely, he was the closest thing to a friend Brady had. “Jace.”
“You heading off this early? You know a few dozen of these folks will be here until the early hours of the morning—including me.”
“I’m not much on parties.”
“Reese says you’ll be acting sheriff while he’s gone.”
“Yeah.” He’d never officially held the position—Reese wasn’t in the habit of taking vacations—but he’d been in charge every other weekend for the past two years. He could handle it for three weeks. It wasn’t as if Canyon County was likely to develop a rash of crimes the minute the sheriff left the state.
“Watch out,” Jace said good-naturedly as Brady reached his truck. “Don’t let the paperwork get to you.”
Something had already gotten to him, Brady thought as he climbed in, and it wasn’t work. He waved goodbye to Jace, then headed for Main Street.
It took five miles, and passing a half dozen cars, to catch up to the convertible with California tags. He got only close enough to be sure it was Hallie’s car, then dropped back a fair distance.
He wasn’t going to follow her to the motel, and there were a dozen reasons or more why. She was his boss’s sister-in-law, and anyone knew you didn’t mess with a man’s family. He’d be better off home alone. She’d been hurt before. He would just be using her, and she’d been used enough.
When they reached the Buffalo Plains town limits, she headed into downtown, where a right turn would take her to her motel on the east side of town. After a moment’s hesitation, he took the first right, onto Cedar Street, and drove the block and a half to his house.
Until two weeks ago, he’d spent his entire six years in Buffalo Plains in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment on the west end of town and had been satisfied there—satisfaction being relative, of course. Then one day while on patrol, he’d seen an old man hammering a For Sale sign in the yard that fronted a small neat house. He’d stopped to ask him about it and had driven away a half hour later with the keys in his pocket and a sales contract pending.
It wasn’t a great house. It was sixty years old, one story, painted white with dark green trim. There was a front porch wide enough for a swing and a back stoop barely big enough for a man to stand on. Inside was a living room, a dining room and kitchen, one bedroom and bathroom, and an additional room he planned someday to incorporate into the living room. The floors were wood, with cracked and peeling linoleum in the kitchen, and the walls needed painting, the bathroom updating, the roof reshingling. He’d paid cash for it, and could have done the same for a house ten times its price, but he hadn’t wanted a bigger, nicer place.
After all, he hadn’t been buying a house but a memory.
One of the few childhood memories he recalled with fondness.
He pulled into the gravel driveway and parked next to his sheriff’s department SUV, then shut off the engine. Nights were quiet in this part of town. The lots were several acres, the houses distant from each other, and behind them was pasture.