The Sheriff's Proposal

His gaze brushed over her quickly. “No. You look just right.”

She felt the heat creep up her cheeks again. No other man had ever made her blush. She chose the cranberry muffin and pushed the other pastries toward him. “Aunt Lily tries to feed me constantly. She always has.”

“She mentioned a few times that you lived with them when you were a teenager.”

Meg had accepted Logan’s invitation expecting to talk about him, not about herself. But he was obviously fishing for her background. Picking up her coffee, she took a sip before she said, “My parents are anthropologists. For my first twelve years, I traveled with them most of the time—mainly in Central and South America, but I also spent time with my aunt and uncle. At twelve, I decided I’d rather stay in Willow Valley than globe-trot.”

He gazed at her a few moments as if he was trying to see what she wasn’t saying. She wasn’t even sure herself about all the emotions that surfaced when she thought about those years, when she thought about her parents not wanting her. Even though she’d had her aunt and uncle, she’d still felt abandoned.

Logan added cream to his coffee. He offered one to Meg, and she shook her head. “A purist,” he teased.

“What’s the point of caffeine if you dilute it?”

He grinned. “On my fourth cup, I find it more palatable. I have a pot sitting in my office all the time.” Leaning back in his chair, he broke off half of the doughnut and ate it. “So, at twelve you didn’t want to globe-trot, but for your adult life, you have.”

“I didn’t go into this profession to travel. That just goes along with it sometimes.”

He leaned forward again, his hand almost brushing hers as he rested it on the table. “Why did you choose to be an interpreter?”

Instead of touching his large hand, as she wanted to do out of curiosity to see what would happen, she toyed with the paper around her muffin. “Because I wanted to help people understand each other. I had a talent for languages because of my upbringing. I was always amazed by the difference in the way people treat each other when they can understand each other. There’s less fear, less anxiety, less suspicion.”

He pulled his hand back and wrapped his fingers around his mug. “How many languages can you speak?” His knee briefly touched hers under the table, but he moved his away.

“Four fluently, not counting dialects.” She sipped again at her coffee.

“You’re uncomfortable talking about yourself, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t expect to have coffee with you and talk about me.”

He smiled. “Why not?”

“Because I thought you might want to talk about Travis.”

He went silent and his jaw tensed. If she’d ever seen a man in pain, that man was Logan. She waited.

His voice deeper, his words terse, he responded, “I think about him day and night. Believe me, I don’t want to talk about the thoughts that are running through my head. And you don’t want to know what they are.”

They sat at a stalemate, Meg wondering if Logan kept all his feelings bottled up, not just those about Travis. She understood his need to keep a lid on his emotions. She did the same thing.

Logan’s cell phone beeped, breaking the tension. “Excuse me, I have to take this call.”

Meg watched Logan as he took the call. The calls for him must be a constant source of hope, but disappointment, too. His face remained neutral. As he began talking, he rubbed the back of his neck. He wasn’t getting news of his son—not good news anyway.

After he ended the call, he said, “I have to cut this short. Cal needs me at the office.”

She stood. “I need to get back, too.” All of a sudden, Meg knew that getting involved with Logan would be more complicated than being involved with a photojournalist who always considered his career more important than their relationship. She didn’t need involvement; she needed peace. As they walked to the door and she said goodbye, she knew the less she saw of Logan the more peaceful she’d feel.

A few days later, Meg picked up the Willow Valley Courier. When she saw her own picture on page one, the same picture that had run in newspapers across the country five weeks ago, memories overwhelmed her. By the time she’d finished the article, the numbness had worn off and she was furious.

Logan’s comments to the reporter about Manuel and Carmen were strictly factual. But he had included her in the mix. Inadvertently or not, he’d dragged her into their drama. He might be sheriff, but she had a right to her privacy just as Manuel and Carmen did. She sat and fumed for a few minutes, then suddenly decided to tell him how she felt.

Meg drove to the sheriff’s department and turned off the ignition before she changed her mind. When she pulled open the door to the office and stepped inside, she saw Cal Martin, one of Logan’s deputies, sitting at the front desk.

In a crisp tone, she said, “I’m here to see Sheriff MacDonald.”

Cal looked her over. “And your name?”

“Meg Dawson.”

Cal’s gaze flashed with recognition. He pointed to the closed office in the back. “Just knock on his door.”

She could feel Cal’s eyes on her back as she crossed the room. Seeing Logan sitting at a massive, scarred wooden desk, she rapped sharply on the glass-paneled door.

He looked up and rose from his chair, opening the door in one quick motion. She’d stood face-to-face with him before, but today his shoulders seemed broader, his legs longer. She should have done this by phone.

“What’s the matter, Meg?”

No doubt her color was high. She hadn’t bothered to run a brush through her hair, and her old cutoffs and short, sleeveless knit top didn’t add to a sense of self-confidence. Boy, she really hadn’t thought this through.

She slapped the paper on his desk and her purse on top of it. “That’s what’s wrong. Why did you mention me and Costa Rica?”

Logan’s brows arched. “Everything I told the reporter is a matter of public record. Doc Jacobs delivered Manuel and Carmen’s baby boy in Lily and Ned’s barn. You acted as interpreter. The reporter was the one who remembered you’d made news before. I just confirmed it.”

“Why did you have to mention me at all?”

Her voice had risen with her question. Cal was looking at her and Logan.

Logan firmly clasped her arm and tugged her away from the door so he could close it. “What’s going on, Meg?”

Feeling embarrassed for making herself a spectacle, she stepped away from him. “Carmen and Manuel turned down the interview. I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to one. This…this—” she waved to the picture “—was unexpected. That’s all.”

Logan’s gaze probed hers until she looked away. She took a few deep breaths, then pushed her hair behind her ear, staring at her picture in the paper, the picture of her and Ramón Pomada standing at the car on the airport runway after the kidnapper had run to the plane. She involuntarily clutched her shoulder, remembering the way it had hurt. She remembered…

Logan was close again. “Meg,” he said gently, “what are you thinking?”

“I, uh, I guess I shouldn’t have bothered you. I should have realized even old news is still news in Willow Valley.”

Logan rested his hands on her shoulders. “Have you talked to anyone about what you went through?”

She looked over his shoulder, trying to deny the emotions swelling inside her. “Just the debriefer.” Her breaths were coming quicker.

“You weren’t allowed to give interviews, were you?”

Her chest tightened, and the air in the room suddenly got thinner. “The governments involved thought it would be better if I didn’t. They just gave the facts.”

“So why did the rehash of the story bother you now?”

His gentle voice stirred her emotions into chaos, making her feel too vulnerable. “The picture,” she murmured as she felt tears prick at her eyes. Now she really felt foolish. She ducked her head and stared straight into Logan’s chest. She could see each breath he took, could feel the warmth of his hands on her shoulders…and wished she was anyplace else but here.