LITMIR.BIZ

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herself she had imagined the broad shoulders, the slim hips, the glimpse of dark wavy hair under the Western straw hat as she had so many times over the years.

      She’d gone only a dozen yards when she saw him. She felt a tremor move through her. With shaking fingers, she reached under her T-shirt and pulled the gun to level it on the broad back of the man standing only feet away.

      “Don’t move!” she ordered, surprised that her voice sounded so unruffled when her heart had taken off like a wild horse in the wind at the sight of him.

      “You wouldn’t shoot a man in the back.”

      The deep resonance of his voice sent her pulse thundering in her ears. She’d heard that voice only in her dreams for the past nine years. The ache she felt was laced with hurt and anger, not to mention the hit her pride had taken.

      “In your case, I’ll make an exception,” she said, easing her finger onto the trigger. Her thoughts whirled like tumbleweeds in the wind. Trask Beaumont had the nerve to show his face around her after all this time? After all that he’d done?

      He raised both hands in the air and turned slowly as if he hadn’t lost all of his good sense during those years away. He’d known her like no other man, like no other man ever would because she’d never let another get that close again.

      Staring at him, she couldn’t believe it. How many times had she told herself that she would never see that face again, a face so handsome it had to be crafted by the Devil himself.

      Her finger twitched on the trigger of the pistol as she reached into her jeans pocket for her cell phone.

      “Easy, darlin’,” he said, taking a step toward her. “You don’t want to shoot me. You don’t want to call your sheriff brother on me, either.”

      “You sure about that?” She thought of the night she’d waited for him until the sun rose and she’d realized he wasn’t coming back for her.

      Trask Beaumont’s lips curved into the grin that had haunted her sleepless nights for years. That grin had not just let this man into her jeans but into her heart. “Damn, Lillie. I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you.”

      “What are you doing here?” She hated the tremor she heard in her voice. She had her cell phone out. All she had to do was hit 9-1-1. Her brother would be there in a heartbeat. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

      Before he could answer, a vehicle roared up on the other side of the building. She recognized the sound of the engine. Engine cut, the driver’s-side door opened and slammed. She listened as her brother Darby entered the bar, then yelled her name.

      She glanced over her shoulder, afraid he’d come looking for her and catch the two of them out there. Knowing how her brothers’ felt about Trask, she hated to think what would happen. It was one thing to have him arrested. It was another to let one of her other brothers at him.

      When she turned back, Trask was gone. Lillie blinked. It was as if he hadn’t been there at all. And yet her heart still thundered in her chest. If she dialed 9-1-1, Flint would come running.

      She stood, the gun in her hand growing heavy, the phone just one keystroke away from the sheriff’s department dispatcher. Trask. He’d come back.

      And now he was gone. Again. Had she not been sane, she might have believed that she’d conjured up his image from a desire she’d spent years trying hard to bury. But she hadn’t dreamed him. He’d left behind his boot prints in the dirt, and even if her eyes had deceived her, her heart had not.

      Trask was back. Conflicting emotions warred inside her. Trask, after all these years. She pocketed her phone and slowly lowered the gun as she began to shake all over. Tears burned her eyes. Why would he come back now? How could he come back, knowing how dangerous it was for him?

      “Lillie?”

      Tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans and covering it with her shirt again, she turned to find her brother standing a few yards away. Had he seen Trask?

      “Have you lost your mind?” Darby demanded, making her fear she had. Before she could respond, he continued, “You leave Dad alone in the bar? Alone in a bar stocked with bright shiny bottles of booze? Didn’t you just get him out of jail?” He stopped his rant to frown. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

      She said the first thing that came to mind that might make sense. “Thought I saw a bear. Didn’t want it getting in the trash again.”

      “We have worse problems in the bar. Come take care of your father,” he said only half-jokingly.

      “He’s your father too,” she pretended to remind him as she followed him. Inside, she found Ely behind the bar with a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand and a big grin on his face.

      “I’ll be in the back,” Darby said with a disgusted shake of his head. “Apparently, you promised him a Johnson breakfast.” It had been their mother’s specialty named after her family.

      The moment Darby disappeared in the back, her father asked, “Find what you was lookin’ for out there?” He was no longer grinning. Nor it seemed had he indulged in the whiskey. Darby’d had no reason to worry. Their father had only been pretending to start the day with whiskey.

      Ely put the bottle down and poured them both a cup of coffee from the automatic coffeemaker that Darby had set last night.

      “She thought she saw a bear,” Darby called from the back over the clatter of pots and pans.

      “A bear?” her father repeated as he studied her over the rim of his coffee cup. He’d definitely seen Trask, she realized, but he was going to keep her secret, since he was the only one in the family who’d ever liked the man his daughter had fallen for at a tender age.

      She swallowed the lump in her throat, touched that her father would understand why she wasn’t going to call the law on the only man she’d ever truly loved.

      “Ya got to watch them bears, Lillie Girl,” her father said, looking worried, “’specially the renegade ones. They’ll turn you every way but loose.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      “YOUR FATHER GETS crazier every year,” Deputy Harper Cole said from where he lounged against the wall at the entrance to the cell block.

      “Nothing wrong with his right hook, though, huh, Harp.” Flint had inherited the deputy when he’d taken the sheriff job with the understanding that the mayor’s son would be kept on.

      The deputy straightened, anger marring his handsome features. “He should have to do time for slugging an officer of the law.”

      “If you’d cuffed the prisoner last night, you wouldn’t have that black eye,” Flint said. Earlier he’d noticed the deputy admiring his wound in the side mirror. Harp was good-looking and spent way too much time taking selfies. Flint would bet he’d put one up on Facebook last night.

      “He nailed me before I could get the cuffs on him. If it had been any of the other deputies, you would have charged him with assault,” Harp whined.

      “The other deputies wouldn’t have taunted him.”

      “What?” he asked as if incredulous. “Is that what he told you?”

      “He didn’t have to. I know you.”

      “Well, it’s my word against his and he’s a liar.”

      Flint looked over at the deputy. “Be careful, Harp. You’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth as it is because of complaints against you. I would tread lightly. Even your father, the mayor, won’t be able to save you next time.” He rose to his feet. “Let’s take a ride.”

      As Flint drove out of town, his deputy said, “Heard the old Chandler ranch just sold to some corporation called L.T.

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