Slow Dance with the Sheriff

She blew at the loose strand of blond hair curling down in front of her left eye and carefully tucked it back into the tight braid hiding the rest of it from him. Working out whether to risk more sarcasm, perhaps?

She settled on disdain.

Good call. Women in cattle-infested waters…

‘Well, Sheriff, if your deputy could rouse himself to the task at hand maybe we can all get on with our day.’

That probably qualified as a peace offering where she came from.

He lifted his head and called loudly, ‘Deputy!’

One hundred and twenty pounds of pure hair and loyalty bounded out of his service vehicle and lumbered towards them. The cattle paid immediate attention and, as a body, began to stir.

‘Settle,’ he murmured. Deputy slowed and sat.

She spun back to look at him. ‘That’s your deputy?’

‘Yup.’

‘A dog?’

‘Dawg, actually.’

She stared. ‘Because this is Texas?’

‘Because it’s his name. Deputy Dawg. It would be disrespectful to call him anything else.’

‘And he’s trained to herd cows?’

He hid his laugh in the grunt of pushing past yet another stubborn steer. ‘Not really, but from where I’m standing beggars can’t be choosers—’ he made himself add some courtesy ‘—ma’am.’

She squatted onto her bottom and slid her feet down the back windscreen of the car. They easily made the trunk.

‘You have a point,’ she grudgingly agreed, then gestured to a particular spot in the fence hidden to him by the wall of steer. ‘The hole’s over there.’

But her concession wasn’t an apology and it wasn’t particularly gracious.

Just like that, he was thinking of New York again. And that sucked the humour plain out of him.

‘Thank you,’ he said, then turned and whistled for Deputy.

Every single cell in Ellie Patterson’s body shrivelled with mortification. Awful enough to be found like this, so absurdly helpless, but she’d been nothing but rude since the officer—sheriff—stopped to help her. As though it was somehow his fault that her day had gone so badly wrong.

Her whole week.

She shuddered in a deep breath and shoved the regret down hard where she kept all her other distracting feelings. Between the two of them, the sheriff and his…Deputy…were making fairly good work of the cows. They’d got the one closest to the hole in the fence turned around and encouraged it back through, but the rest weren’t exactly hurrying to follow. It wasn’t like picking up one lost duckling in Central Park and having the whole flock come scrambling after it.

The massive tricolour dog weaved easily between the forest of legs, keeping the cows’ attention firmly on it and away from her—a small blessing—but the sheriff was slapping the odd rump, whistling and cursing lightly at the animals in a way that was very…well…Texan.

He couldn’t have been more cowboy if he tried.

But there was a certain unconcerned confidence in his actions that was very appealing. This was not a man that would be caught dead cowering on the roof of his car.

Another animal lumbered through to the paddock it had come from and casually wandered off to eat some grass. Thirty others still surrounded her.

This was going to take some time.

Ellie relaxed on her unconventional perch and channelled her inner Alex—her easygoing baby sister—scratching around for the positives in the moment. Actually, the Texan sun was pleasant once the drama of the past couple of hours had passed and once someone else was taking responsibility for the cows. And there were worse ways to pass the time than watching a good-looking man build up a sweat.

‘Sure you don’t want to come down here and help now that you’ve seen how docile they are?’ the man in question called.

Docile? They’d nearly trampled her earlier. Sort of. Getting friendly with the wildlife was not the reason she drove all this way to Texas.

Not that she’d really thought through any part of this visit.

Two days ago she’d burst out of the building her family owned, fresh from the devil of all showdowns with her mother in which she’d hurled words like hypocrite and liar at the woman who’d given her life. In about as much emotional pain as she could ever remember being.

Two hours and a lot of hastily dropped gratuities later, she was on the I-78 in a little white rental heading south.

Destination: Texas.

‘Very sure, thank you, Sheriff. You were clearly born for this.’

He seemed to stiffen but it was only momentary. If she got lucky, country cowboys—even ones in uniform—had dulled sarcasm receptors.

‘So…Jess just got married?’ she called to fill the suddenly awkward silence. Back home there was seldom any silence long enough to become awkward.

‘Yep.’ He slapped another rump and sent a cow forward. ‘You said you know the Calhouns?’

I think I am one. Wouldn’t that put a tilt in his hat and a heap more lines in his good ol’ Texan brow.

‘I… Yes. Sort of.’

He did as good a job of the head tilt as his giant dog. ‘Didn’t realise knowing someone or not was a matter of degrees.’

It really was poor on her part that two straight days on the road and she hadn’t really thought about how she was going to answer these kinds of questions. But she hadn’t worked the top parties of New York only to fall apart the moment a stranger asked a few pointed questions.

She pulled herself together. ‘I’m expected, but I’m…early.’ Cough. A couple of months early. ‘I wasn’t aware of Jessica’s plans.’

They fell to silence again. Then he busied himself with more cows. They were starting to move more easily now that their volume had reduced on this side of the wire, inversely proportional to the effort the sheriff was putting in. His movements were slowing and his breath came faster. But every move spoke of strength and resilience.

‘Your timing is off,’ he puffed between heaving cows. ‘Holt’s away, too, right now and Meg’s away at college. Nate’s still on tour.’

Her chest squeezed. Two brothers and two sisters? Just like that, her family doubled. But she struggled to hide the impact his simple words had. ‘Tour? Rock star or military?’

He slowly turned and stared right at her as if she’d insulted him. ‘Military.’

Clipped and deep. Maybe she had offended him? His accent was there but nowhere near as pronounced as the young cowboy she’d met out at the Calhoun ranch who told her in his thick drawl that Jess wasn’t home. Least that’s what she’d thought he’d said. She wasn’t fluent in deep Texan.