Slow Dance with the Sheriff

She risked conversation between his mouthfuls. ‘The Calhouns have quite a presence.’

‘They should. They’re Larkville’s founding family. Jess’s great-great-granddaddy put down roots here in 1856.’

‘And they’re…well respected?’

The look he threw her over his contented munching was speculative. ‘Very much so. Clay’s death hit the whole town hard. They’re dedicating the Fall Festival to him.’

‘Really? The whole thing?’

‘The Calhouns practically ran that festival anyway. Was fitting.’

‘Who’s running it now?’ With Sandra and Clay both gone, and all the kids away?

‘Jess and Holt will be back soon enough. Nate, too, God willing. Everyone else is pitching in to help.’

She filed that away for future reference. ‘What happens at a fall festival?’

He smiled. ‘You’d hate it. Livestock everywhere.’

Heat surged up her throat. ‘I don’t hate cows…’

‘I’m just teasing, relax. Candy corn, rides, crafts, hot-dog-eating competitions. Pretty much what happens at fall festivals all over the country.’

She stared at him.

His eyebrows rose. ‘Never?’

The heat threatened again. ‘I’ve never left New York.’

‘In your entire life?’

She shrugged, though she didn’t feel at all relaxed about the disbelief in his voice. ‘This is my first time.’

‘Summers?’

Her lips tightened. ‘Always rehearsing.’

‘Family vacations?’

‘We didn’t take them.’ The way he’d frozen with his sandwich halfway to his mouth got her back up. ‘And you did?’

‘Heck, yes. Every year my gram would throw me and her ducks in her old van and head off somewhere new.’

The ducks distracted her for a moment, but only a moment. ‘You lived with your grandmother?’

His eyes immediately dropped to his plate. He busied himself mopping up the last of the jam.

She’d grown up with Matt for a brother. She knew when to wield silence for maximum effect. Jed lasted about eight seconds.

‘My parents got pregnant young. Real young. Dad got custody after Mom took off. Gram was his mother. They raised me together.’

Mom took off. There was a lot of story missing in those few words. If only she didn’t respect her own privacy so much—it necessarily forced her to respect his. ‘But your dad wasn’t in the van with you and the ducks every summer?’

‘He worked a lot. And then he—’ Jed cleared his throat and followed it up with an apple-slice chaser ‘—he died when I was six.’

Oh. The charming cowboy suddenly took on an unexpected dimension. Losing your parent so young… And here she was whining about having too many parents. ‘That must have been tough for you to get over.’

‘Gram was a rock. And a country woman herself. She knew how to raise boys.’

‘Is she still here in Larkville?’

The eyes found hers again. ‘I’m not from Larkville, originally.’

‘Really?’ He seemed so much part of the furniture here. Of the earth. ‘I thought your accent wasn’t as pronounced as everyone else’s. Where are you from?’

‘Gram was from the Lehigh Valley. But my dad was NYPD. He met my mother while he was training.’

New York. Her world—and her hopes at anonymity—shrank. She moderated her breath just like in a heavy dance routine. ‘Manhattan?’

‘Queens, mostly. He commuted between shifts back out to the Valley. To us.’

‘And he’s the reason you became a cop?’

‘He’s part of it. He, uh, died on duty. That meant there was legacy funding for my schooling. It felt natural to go into law enforcement.’

Died on duty. But something much more immediate pressed down on her. ‘You studied in New York?’

His eyes hooded. ‘I lived and worked in Manhattan for fifteen years.’

Her voice grew tiny. ‘You didn’t say. When I told you where I was from.’

‘A lot of people come from New York. It’s not that remarkable.’

So she just asked him outright what she needed to know. ‘Do you know who I am?’

That surprised him. ‘Why? Are you famous?’

His cavalier brush while she was stressing out didn’t sit well with her. She took the chance to push her plate onto the footstool next to them. ‘Be serious.’

He stared at her. Doing the math. Consulting his mental Who’s Who of New York. She saw the exact moment that the penny dropped. ‘You’re a Patterson Patterson?’