Sheriff Takes A Bride

Granny laid the phone down. Hallie heard a quick, muffled conversation, complete with a little ripe cussing from Granny Pearl, then a deep male voice came on the line.

There was nothing scratchy about the phone line now. It fairly rumbled with the low, earthy voice. Hallie felt it tingle across her nerve endings like sandpaper over new skin. She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Sheriff,” she said coolly, “just what is it my grandmother’s supposed to have done?”

Sheriff Cam Osborne heard the tension in Hallie Cates’s voice ripple across the wire. He couldn’t help but wonder if the woman was the she-lion her granny was. And what the granddaughter from Fort Worth would say if she knew Granny Pearl had sunk her teeth into his right arm in a moment of nonvigilance on his part. That was a mistake he wasn’t about to make again—even if he had to lock the old gal up in solitary until her temper cooled a bit. If it ever did.

It would probably be one cold day in hell.

“She’s been charged with a couple of things, the most serious being selling moonshine to half the county.” He’d keep the resisting arrest and assaulting an officer of the law with a seventy-nine-year-old set of choppers for later. At least until he knew what kind of woman Pearl Cates’s pretty granddaughter was. He hated to admit he was interested. He’d seen her picture standing in a frame on the mantel over Granny’s fireplace. Thick red hair, worn loose to her shoulders, high blushing cheekbones and a sweet little mouth that just begged to be kissed.

But that he knew he had no business thinking about Who even knew if Hallie Cates would come to her grandmother’s rescue? Hadn’t Pearl said her granddaughter didn’t come back to Arkansas very often?

He took some vague satisfaction at her small gasp. “Moonshine? Why... why Granny Pearl would never... She wouldn’t... I mean, Sheriff, there must be some mistake.”

And she clearly implied he’d made it Cam sniffed the cork of the hundred-proof “evidence” he’d confiscated from his prisoner, nearly becoming looped from the stuffs fumes. Oh, the old woman was guilty all right Not to mention, downright unrepentant about her little...business. “Trust me, Ms. Cates, there’s been no mistake.”

Another small gasp, this one sounding more like an irate sigh. “How could you even think one sweet, docile, little old lady would break the law? Why, Granny is—”

“Neither sweet, nor docile,” he interrupted the tirade she was only just warming to. From her spot beside him, Granny Pearl was giving him the devil eye. The woman was just lucky he hadn’t handcuffed her to that chair she was sitting on. No, she was hardly sweet. And as for docile...?

He rubbed the bite mark on his arm.

“Okay, okay, so Granny may be a little...feisty.” Hallie Cates admitted from her end of the line. “But she’s as honest and law-abiding as the day is long. And I can vouch for that.”

Cam dragged a hand through his dark hair. They were getting nowhere here. “I’m sure you’ll get an opportunity to voice your opinion in court,” he told her, “but for now—”

Cam had to hold the phone away from his ear. “Just what kind of a low-down poleskunk are you to throw a little old lady in the clink and feed her nothing but bread and water for supper?” The woman’s blast was nearly deafening.

“Give him hell, Hallie!” Granny yelped, joining in the fracas from this end. She’d gotten to her feet and was threatening Cam with balled fists.

It wouldn’t take much for him to lock both women in a cell for a year or two. What had ever made him think a job as small-town sheriff might be preferable to the vicissitudes of the Chicago police force? He had to be crazy.

No—he wasn’t. It was the world. The world was crazy. Here, everywhere. He’d only thought he’d escaped it.

Cam didn’t relish the reputation he was sure to get for locking up a seventy-nine-year-old, and a woman, at that. But the law was the law. And Cam didn’t bend it. Not in Chicago—and not here.

“Well, Sheriff?”

Cam ordered Pearl back to her chair, then returned his attention to the voice on the other end. He suspected under other circumstances it could be velvety, caressing a man’s soul, not to mention his well-fired hormones. “The menu tonight is planked steak and green beans, with a side of biscuits. And I might suggest you don’t believe everything your sweet little grandmother tells you, Ms. Cates.”

It was all Cam could say at the moment. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do with Pearl Cates. Or with her granddaughter, who would no doubt be showing up soon, wrapped in plenty of fury and indignation, to save Pearl from the town’s heartless sheriff.

Hallie hated driving the winding back roads that led to Greens Hollow. At night they were much more than winding, they were downright dangerous. But the rude, unfeeling sheriff had left her no choice but to drop everything and race to the small town. That was, unless she wanted Granny to be spending a night alone in jail, at the man’s mercy—something of which Sheriff Cam Osborne had little, if any, she suspected.

She’d hastily thrown clothes into a suitcase, wrapped up the cookies she’d baked, deciding to take them to Granny, and headed off down the highway.

School was out for the summer, and her class of second-graders would be going off to camp, swimming, having fun—and Hallie would miss them. She’d planned a full summer schedule for herself as well, one that hadn’t included bailing her grandmother out of jail.

She’d intended to try her hand at tennis lessons, read a few books she’d been saving for a lazy sunny afternoon on the side porch, maybe take a language course—Russian or Eastern Tibetan—whatever struck her fancy.

But Granny Pearl needed her.

It was ten o’clock by the time Hallie drew up in front of the sheriff’s office. It was a small stone building that had been around for at least half a century, newer than most of the places in or around Greens Hollow. Every light inside was blazing, which meant that Cam Osborne hadn’t locked Granny in for the night and gone home, leaving the old woman alone and frightened.

If he had, he’d have had to answer to Hallie.

Hallie slammed the door to her small, overheated red Subaru, trying to keep her mind on rescuing Granny. If only the old girl would move to Fort Worth with her, it would make Hallie’s life simpler, she thought as she hurried toward the front entrance.

“Cheating? I am not cheating! You, Sheriff, are wrong. I never cheat.”

“Or make moonshine either, I suppose?”

Hallie recognized the deep resonant voice following Granny’s as the one she’d heard earlier on the phone.

A checkers game was in hot progress through the cell bars, Granny on the unfortunate side of them. Hallie stood and stared, curious to see if Granny could hold her own against the man who held her captive, both literally and otherwise.

“I saw you move that checker, you sneaky old woman—and you’re not going to get away with it,” came the sheriff’s reply.

“Prove it, Cam Osbome!”

Hallie hid a smile at Granny’s ornery rejoinder and wondered if the man would back down. He didn’t look the type to do any such thing. She took in the width of his shoulders. Unless she missed her guess, the man could wrestle a bear as easily as he could a little old lady who cheated at checkers. Maybe, just maybe, Granny had met her match with Cam Osborne.

His long legs were stretched out in front of him, sheathed in faded denim that fit him like a second skin. His shirt was a dusky blue and fit him just as sensually. Thick dark hair, worn a little long, curled over his shirt collar, and Hallie found herself wondering at its silkiness, what it might be like to delve her fingers into its richness. Quickly she checked that thought.

“Game’s over, Granny.” He folded the game board, sending checkers flying.

There was a spate of cussing from Granny before she spotted Hallie over the man’s broad shoulders.

“Hallie! Thank God you’re here. This brute is no gentleman.”

“And you, Pearl Cates, are no lady.”

Ignoring Granny’s loud harumph, he turned toward Hallie and stuck out a hand. “Sheriff Cam Osborne,” he said.

Hallie glanced at the man’s hand, debating about taking it. It was broad and sensual. Capable. Of what, she didn’t want to think about. It would swallow hers up without a doubt and she’d feel the tingle all the way to her toes. And she wasn’t sure she should risk that—not at the moment. If she were wise, not ever.

“Sheriff,” she said coolly.

The man’s eyes were a beguiling brown, his jaw strong and slightly arrogant, the kind that invited a fight or two on a Saturday night—and she didn’t have to guess who would come out the winner. His smile was slow and tempting when he chose to let it slip.

“I want out of here, Hallie. Tell this man to let me go.” Granny had her wizened face pressed to the bars, and Hallie had the sense that if the woman could get her hands on Cam Osborne at the moment she’d let loose with one good roundhouse punch.

Not that it would have a whole lot of impact on that granite body of his.

“I intend to do just that, Granny,” Hallie said, then ignoring the sheriff, went to give her grandmother a big warm hug, albeit through the cell bars.

“I brought you your favorite cookies, Granny,” she told the woman and saw a smile light her face.

“Bring ’em to me now,” she said. “That supper I got wasn’t enough to feed a carrier pigeon. I’m starved.”