LITMIR.BIZ

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a throat gurgle from Deputy got his attention. He turned and looked back up the dirt road where a dust stream had appeared.

      ‘That’s Calhoun men,’ he said simply. ‘They’ll deal with the rest of the steer and repair the fence.’

      Instant panic hit her. If they were Calhoun employees, then they were her employees. She absolutely didn’t want their first impression of her to be like this, cowering and ridiculous on the rooftop of her car. What if they remembered it when they found out who she was? She started to slide off.

      Without asking, he stretched up over the trunk and caught her around the waist to help her dismount. Her bare feet touched softly down onto the cow-compacted earth and she stumbled against him harder than was polite.

      Or bearable.

      She used the moment of steadying herself as an excuse to push some urgent distance between them but he stayed close, towering over her and keeping the last curious cows back. A moment later, a truck pulled up and a handful of cowboys leapt off the tray and launched into immediate action. That gave her the time she needed to slip her heels back on and slide back into the rental.

      She was Eleanor Patterson. Unflappable. Capable. Confident.

      Once inside, she lowered her window and smiled her best New York dazzler out at him. ‘Thank you, Sheriff—’

      ‘Jed.’

      ‘—for everything. I’ll know better than to get out in the middle of a stampede next time.’

      And just as she was feeling supremely on top of things again, he reached through her open window and brushed his fingers against her braided hair and retrieved a single piece of straw.

      Her chest sucked in just as all the air in her body puffed out and she couldn’t help the flinch from his large, tanned fingers.

      No one touched her hair.

      No one.

      She faked fumbling for her keys and it effectively brushed his hand away. But it didn’t do a thing to diminish the temporary warmth his brief touch had caused. Its lingering compounded her confusion.

      But he didn’t miss her knee-jerk reaction. His lips tightened and Ellie wished he’d take the sunglasses off so she could see his eyes. For just a moment. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and pushed away her hormones’ sudden interest in Sheriff Jerry Jackson.

      ‘Welcome to Larkville, Ms. Patterson,’ he rumbled, deep and low.

      Larkville. Really, shouldn’t a town with a name like that have better news to offer? A town full of levity and pratfalls, not secrets and heartbreak.

      But she had to find out.

      Either Cedric Patterson was her father…or he wasn’t.

      And if he wasn’t—her stomach curled in on itself—what the hell was she going to do?

      She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you again, Sheriff.’

      ‘Remember…the Alamo.’

      The timing was too good. Despite all her exhaustion and uncertainty, despite everything that had torn her world wide open this past week, laughter suddenly wanted to tumble out into the midday air.

      She resisted it, holding the unfamiliar sensation to herself instead.

      She started her rental.

      She put it in gear.

      Funny how she had to force herself to drive off.

      CHAPTER TWO

      LARKVILLE was lovely. Larkville was kind. Larkville was extremely interested in who she was and why she’d come and clearly disappointed by her not sharing. But no one in the small, old Texas town had been able to find a bed for her. Despite their honest best efforts.

      Remember the Alamo…

      Sheriff Jackson’s voice had wafted uninvited through her head a few times in the afternoon since her sojourn with the cows but—for reasons she was still trying to figure out—she didn’t want to take his advice. The Alamo might be a charming B & B run by the most delightful old Texan grandmother with handmade quilts, but she’d developed an almost pathological resistance to the idea of driving across town to check it out.

      Although three others had suggested she try there.

      Instead she’d steadfastly ignored the pressing nature of her lack of accommodation and she’d lost herself in Larkville’s loveliest antique and craft shops as the sun crawled across the sky. She’d had half a nut-bread sandwich for a late lunch in the town’s pretty monument square. She’d grabbed a few pictures on her phone.

      None of which would help her when the sun set and she had nowhere to go but back to New York.

      No. Not going to happen.

      She’d sleep in her car before doing that. She had a credit card full of funds, a heart full of regrets back in New York and a possible sister to meet in Texas. She turned her head to the west and stared off in the direction of the Alamo and tuned in to the confusion roiling in her usually uncluttered mind.

      She didn’t want to discover that Texan grandmother had room for one more. She didn’t want Sheriff Jed Jackson to be right.

      Because his being right about that might cast a different light on other decisions she’d made about coming here. About keeping Jessica Calhoun’s extraordinary letter secret from everyone but her mother. From her siblings. From her twin—the other Patterson so immediately affected. Maybe more so than her because Matt was their father’s heir.

      She drew in a soft breath.

      Or maybe he wasn’t, now.

      Dread washed through her. Poor Matt. How lost was he going to be when he found out? The two of them might have lost the closeness they’d enjoyed as children but he was still her twin. They’d spent nine months entwined and embracing in their mother’s womb. Now they’d be lucky to speak to each other once in that time.

      She didn’t always like Matt but she absolutely loved him.

      She owed it to him, if not herself, to find out the truth. To protect him from it, if it was lies, and to break it to him gently if it wasn’t.

      A sigh shuddered through her.

      It wasn’t. Deep down Ellie knew that. Her mother’s carefully schooled candor slammed the door on the last bit of hope she’d had that Jessica Calhoun had mixed her up with someone else.

      Of their own accord, her feet started taking her back towards her car, back towards the one last hope she had of staying in Larkville. Back towards her vision of kindly grandmothers, open stoves and steaming pots full of home-cooked soup.

      Back to the Alamo.

      There were worse places to wait out a few days.

      ‘Well, well…’

      Ellie’s shock was as much for the fact that the big, solid door opened to a big, solid man as it was for the fact that County Sheriff Jed Jackson had no reason to wear his sunglasses disguise indoors.

      For a man so large, she wasn’t expecting eyes like this. As pale as his faded tan T-shirt, framed by low, dark eyebrows and fringed with long lashes. His brown hair was dishevelled when not covered by a hat, flecked with grey and his five-o’clock shadow was right on time.

      Coherent thoughts scattered on the evening breeze and all she could do was stare into those amazing eyes.

      He slid one long arm up the doorframe and leaned casually into it. It only made him seem larger. ‘I thought you’d have gone with Nan’s Bunk’n’Grill out of sheer stubbornness,’ he murmured.

      Ellie tried to see past him, looking for signs of the hand-hewn craft and that pot of soup she’d convinced herself would be waiting. ‘You’re staying here?’

      No

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