The Sheriff and The Amnesiac. Ryanne Corey
hair drifted around his forehead in the smoky, fluorescent lights. “Why?”
“Why?” She gave him a peculiar look. “Because that’s what people do in places like this. They roll bowling balls. Good old-fashioned family fun.” She put an unmistakable emphasis on family.
Amazingly, it didn’t even faze him. “No,” he said patiently, “I meant, why are you leaving? You just got here, and I’m pretty sure you don’t have a date tonight or have plans to wash your hair or something. So why the hurry?”
Jenny couldn’t understand his persistence. His wife and children were within shouting distance and still he smiled with that brilliant, imperturbable gaze fastened on her. “Bowling alleys are kind of tame for a dangerous hell-raiser like myself. Besides, I don’t think your wife and children should be exposed to the criminal element.” There, she thought. Chew on that one for a while, Gladiator.
But instead of flushing, Tyler’s expression went oddly blank. “Who? My what? Oh Lord, don’t wish that on me.” He actually shivered. “She’s my sister. I’m here with my sister. I came along to protect everyone else from those miniature pit bulls of hers. They’re proof positive that big things come in small packages.”
The tight little fist that had been clamped on Jenny’s stomach relaxed a bit. Not his wife, not his children. There went her hopeful perception of him as a two-timing Lothario. He would have been much easier to deal with had his character been less than sterling. Now he was a thoughtful and considerate man who chaperoned his sister and her children to the bowling alley on a Friday night. This was horrible. “Whatever,” she muttered, her cheeks burning bright as she tried to ignore the lazy amusement sparkling in his eyes. “It’s certainly very sheriff-like of you, protecting all these helpless bowlers from those terrifying little boys. I’m surprised you’re not wearing a gun.”
His gaze slowly traveled the length of her, while his damnable, sweetly teasing smile played with his lips. “Who says I’m not wearing my gun? It always pays to be—”
“It’s past my bedtime,” Jenny said abruptly, manufacturing a wide yawn. “Way past. We hell-raisers need a lot of sleep to keep us in tip-top condition. Happy bowling, Sheriff.”
But when she tried once more to leave, he did a quick sidestep and once more prevented her from escaping. The man was very quick on his feet. “I make you nervous, don’t I?”
She stepped to the left; he stepped right along with her. Exasperated, Jenny folded her arms over her chest and threw up her determined little chin, looking him straight in the eyes. “Too much coffee makes me nervous,” she said. “Motorcycles that are possessed by the devil make me nervous. Clogged toilets, split ends and ingrown toenails make me nervous. And that just about covers it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m putting an end to our wonderful conversation.”
But then came a new voice into the wonderful conversation: “Heavens to Betsy, if this doesn’t do my little heart good.”
It was Tyler’s sister, slipping up beside him and tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. She looked like an all-American Thoroughbred, with long legs encased in tight white jeans and a cloud of baby-fine ivory hair pulled away from the sides of her face with tortoiseshell combs. A black-and-white-checkered shirt was tucked into a narrow leather belt, emphasizing the smallest waist Jenny had ever seen. She wore absolutely no makeup at all, just the healthy glow of a sun-kissed complexion. She looked to be no more than eighteen years old, which would have made her—what?—around fifteen years old when she had her children? Saints alive. They seemed to start their families early here in Bridal Veil Falls.
She smiled at Jenny with mischievous blue eyes, the unusual, crystalline color identical to Tyler’s. “Usually Ty has the most predictable effect on women. They make goo-goo eyes and pant and slip him phone numbers, but they never, ever brush him off like you just did. Obviously, you’re a woman to be reckoned with. I’m going to like you.”
“Rosie’s very shy,” Tyler said. “Can you tell? Go away, Rosie.”
Rosie continued with her breathless chatter, happily oblivious to her brother’s ominous scowl. “He told me he had arrested Julia Roberts this afternoon. Now I see what he meant. You resemble her, you really do.”
“What do I have to do to get rid of you?” Tyler asked his sister. His smile was gone. Completely. “Can’t you just be cooperative for once in your life?”
“I’ve been trying to get rid of you for six years,” Rosie scoffed, dismissing him with an airy hand. “Still you insist on continuing with the overbearing brother routine. I’ve learned from the best, and I will not be ordered around.” She turned back to Jenny with a lavish, approving smile. “Where were we? Oh, yes, Julia Roberts. You really are lovely, really. No wonder Tyler told me he was—”
“Go bowl, Rosie,” Tyler snapped. A light of panic flashed in his blue, blue eyes.
“—going to keep you,” Rosie said brightly.
Three
“Will you look at her go?” Rosie commented innocently, observing Jenny’s rapidly retreating back with limpid blue eyes. “She didn’t even say goodbye. Dear me. Did I say something wrong, Ty?”
“‘Will you look at her go?’” he imitated in a scathing falsetto. “‘Did I say something wrong, Ty?’ Damn it, Rosie, why can’t you mind your own business? You have no idea what I’m up against here.”
Rosie stood on her tiptoes and knuckled the top of his head with her fist. “You’re a big, strapping boy, you can handle it. I have to get back to the terrible two. When you come back, grab the boys a couple of hamburgers from the snack bar.”
“When I come back from where?” Tyler muttered, watching Jenny disappear through the front doors. He’d never seen a woman’s rear end sway with such disdain. She had very fluent body language.
“Back from chasing her down,” Rosie explained kindly. “I’ve never seen you doing the chasing before. This is so entertaining. Don’t forget—two hamburgers. No onions, no mustard. No anything but catsup—you know how they like ’em. And grab me a drink, too. Well, go on. What are you waiting for?”
Tyler bared his teeth at his sister with a frustrated growl, then took off running toward the front doors. He actually felt sorry for Jenny. Rosie’s not-so-subtle sense of humor took a little getting used to. He was half afraid Jenny would plant herself by the side of the highway and hitch a ride with the first trucker that came along.
Once outside, he stopped short. Jenny was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t figure out how she’d vanished so quickly. She hadn’t had time to cross the street and make it back inside the Cotton Tree. So where was she?
He started jogging again, going back and forth along the rows of parked cars, even stopping once to flop down on his belly and look underneath the parked cars. This woman seemed to have a talent for pulling off disappearing acts.
And then he saw her.
The picture she made took him completely by surprise. She was sitting on the rear bumper of a Ford pickup at the far corner of the parking lot. Her shoulders were slumped, her hands dangled in her lap. Flickering light from the neon Ritz Classic sign colored her small figure with a ghostly rainbow of changing colors. As he stared at the unutterably weary angle of her neck and head, the realization came to him that she was fighting tears. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.
She looked so small from this distance, like a porcelain doll overwhelmed by the bleak silhouettes of cars and trucks. And oddly exhausted. She was barely fifty feet from the highway; a tanker truck passed and her hair snarled around her head in a wild, wind-whipped cloud. It looked to Tyler as if she had intended to cross the road to the motel, only to make it this far before she ran out of energy.
His throat dry with a sudden anxiety, he started slowly walking toward her. She didn’t hear him coming until he was practically at her side, then her head whipped up and she pushed