LITMIR.BIZ

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raised her head again, she had regained control. Almost steadily, she asked, “What do you mean, over me?”

      Murray surprised her by covering her clenched fist with his large hand. “It would appear that Mr. Sommers was insulting you. The other man took exception to what he was saying. They’d both had a few too many.”

      “Is he…is he in jail?”

      “He was held overnight. My guess is he’ll plea-bargain and end up with no more than probation and a promise to attend AA or go into alcohol treatment.”

      “I wouldn’t have said he had a drinking problem.” Beth sighed. “But then, he’s doing a lot of things I never thought he would.”

      “Does he drink when the girls are with him?”

      “Oh, God.” She’d never asked. Wouldn’t Steph, at least, have said? “I don’t know. In the past when he was mad, like the night you saw him, he didn’t seem drunk.”

      “No, he didn’t,” Murray conceded.

      Neither said anything. The silence began to feel awkward. Beth looked at her half-eaten lunch and decided she wasn’t hungry. The sheriff hadn’t even picked up his fork to start the pie the waitress had brought.

      “Ms. Sommers…” He growled something under his breath and rubbed the back of his neck as though the muscles were stiff. “This is probably unprofessional of me…. No, it’s damned unprofessional, but I’m going to do it anyway. Will you have dinner with me?”

      “Dinner?” She felt like an idiot echoing him, especially since on some level she, too, had felt the attraction. But she had assumed him to be married, or that he would be put off by her problems, or…

      He looked uncomfortable. “I’d like to take you to dinner,” he said again.

      Beth was shaking her head even before she had thought any further. “Sheriff…”

      “Jack.”

      The title had helped her think of him as a police officer, a public official, not as a man. She needed the safer distance that gave her. But she could hardly refuse to use his first name.

      “Jack, then,” Beth agreed. “I’m sorry, but…”

      “Why not?” he asked bluntly, his dark gaze square on her face.

      He was big enough that she felt crowded suddenly in the booth. His knees bumped hers as he moved restlessly; his shoulders blocked her view of the front of the café. Beth imagined wrapping her arms around his neck, ruffling his silky hair, feeling that hard, crooked mouth on hers, and gave a shiver of near panic.

      “Surely you can see this isn’t a good moment for me to be thinking about getting involved….”

      “Don’t let him stop you.”

      “I…” She blinked. Did she fear that she would anger Ray more? But she knew even without deep analysis that her reasons were more complex.

      “If I’d let him stop me from doing what was right for me, we’d still be married. This is just…not the best moment.” She didn’t add that he wasn’t the man with whom she would have chosen to start, either. “I’m flattered that you’re interested, but you’ll have to accept my regrets. Now, I really should be getting back to the store.”

      Hands flat on the table, he had gone very still. “If you change your mind…”

      She made a face at him. “I’ll call the Butte County Sheriff’s Office and pass on a message. Right.”

      His mouth crooked into a faint smile. “That wouldn’t be a problem.”

      Despite herself, she hesitated. “Thank you,” she said, and meant it.

      Murray cleared his throat. “Ms. Sommers…Beth. I, uh, hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable. I want you to be able to call if you need me. I live close by.” He reached inside his suit coat and took out a business card, extending it across the table to her. “My home phone. I can be at your place in not much over a minute.”

      Her sinuses burned and she gripped the card so tightly it crumpled in her fingers. “I don’t know what to say.”

      He picked up his fork. “Don’t say anything. Just don’t hesitate if you need me.”

      For an instant their eyes met, and her pulse took an odd leap. Then she pressed her lips together, gave a jerky nod and slipped out of the booth. One more “Thank you,” and she fled, pausing only long enough to pay the cashier.

      She could feel his gaze on her back as she waited for her receipt and hurried out the front door. Why she was compelled to hurry, Beth couldn’t have said. Her heart was beating too hard; exhilaration was mixed with a need to run. She tried to convince herself that the news about Ray was the cause of her turmoil, but failed.

      Not that it wasn’t upsetting. During the final months of their marriage, Ray had scared her by the depth of his temper; several times he had viciously flung a chair or lamp across the room, breaking it, and during that last, memorable fight, he’d slammed his fist through the wallboard. But even then, he hadn’t hurt her.

      Had that changed? If Ray could break a man’s nose in a tavern brawl, what might he do to her?

      He had been drunk, she reminded herself, but Beth recognized the excuse for what it was. Anyway, there was no saying he wouldn’t come to her house drunk some night.

      The locksmith had already replaced the locks and added a few on windows and the French doors leading out to the deck in back. But she hadn’t done anything about buying a security system. It seemed so ridiculous in Elk Springs, for heaven’s sake!

      But now she imagined Ray, drunk, pounding on the door, his fury rising because she wouldn’t let him in. The locks on the French doors wouldn’t stop him from breaking a pane of glass and opening the door.

      She would definitely call around this afternoon and get some bids.

      Beth’s pace slowed as she reached the main street and turned the corner. Face it, she told herself, stopping to look in the bakery window without seeing the temptations arrayed there. It wasn’t just the news about Ray that had upset her. It was Jack Murray. Why did he have to be interested in her?

      And why now?

      She wasn’t ready. In that part of her mind reserved for vague thoughts about the future, she had imagined another man, someday. He would be nothing like Ray, nothing. He was some sort of compendium of the modern men found in television commercials. She had seen him clapping at school plays, stir-frying dinner in the wok. He was a reader, a man who would think nothing of running over to Portland for a major museum exhibit, who never raised his voice, who listened intelligently, asked for her thoughts. He was faceless, this man, almost sexless, pleasant, thoughtful, even-tempered…unreal. A bloodless fantasy for a woman who had had too much of strong emotions, who didn’t want gritty and real, who’d had enough of that.

      Jack Murray was real. She could imagine him strolling the hushed galleries of the museum, but when she closed her eyes, she saw him playing one-on-one basketball at the gym, sweating, grunting, using his elbows, slamming against another man as they went up for a rebound. He had been soft-spoken with Ray and her, but he also patronized women, undoubtedly raised his voice, and probably got some kind of charge out of wearing a gun.

      And he tweaked something sexual in her that hadn’t been touched in a long time, and certainly not by the faceless man she tried so hard to see when she lay alone in bed at night.

      Beth let out a long breath of air, blinked and realized that through the glass she was staring right at Mrs. Parker behind the counter in the bakery. The woman was smiling uncertainly, and Beth managed to pull herself together enough to return the smile.

      Damn it, she thought a minute later, pushing open the door of Sisters Office Supply, a woman could make intelligent choices. Ray was all she’d ever known. The sexual part of her had been tuned to him; it

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