So much for intimidation. “Um...no.”
“It seems like somebody’s in trouble with my better half.”
Cole turned, profoundly grateful to see Jase Crenshaw standing in the door to the outer office, one side of his mouth curved as he looked between Cole and Emily.
“The sheriff wants to talk to you,” Emily told her husband.
“Okay,” Jase answered and walked forward, leaning over the receptionist desk to kiss her, while gently placing a hand on her baby bump.
Cole quickly turned and refilled his coffee mug, uncomfortable with the easy show of affection.
“But he’s acting suspicious.” Emily frowned at Cole. “Something’s up and I want to know what it is.”
“It’s nothing,” Cole insisted and flicked a help-me glance to Jase.
“You might as well say it.” Jase shrugged. “If she doesn’t find out now, I’ll have to tell her later.”
“What if it’s confidential?”
Emily sniffed. “I’m hiswife. He tells me everything.”
Jase nodded. “It’s true. I’m not an expert on marriage, but I do understand that honesty is a pretty important foundation.”
Anger spiked in Cole’s chest, familiar to him as his face in the mirror. Not at Jase or Emily but at memories of his own father’s lies and deceptions—the ones that had torn apart his family.
He blew out a breath, forcing his emotions under control. “I clocked a woman driving twenty miles over the speed limit coming into Crimson this morning.”
“An out-of-towner, I assume?” Jase asked.
Emily scrunched up her nose. “What does that have to do—?”
“Her name was Sienna Pierce,” Cole interrupted.
Emily immediately placed a hand on Jase’s arm, almost the same way Sienna had done with Cole in the car earlier. He’d overreacted to the gesture but couldn’t seem to stop himself from freaking out any time he was forced to talk about his family.
It was one of the reasons he’d first applied as a sheriff’s deputy in Crimson five years ago. No one knew him here and it was easy to keep his conversations about his past vague—just the way he liked it.
“You gave my sister a speeding ticket?” Jase asked, his tone almost unnaturally calm.
“Not exactly,” Cole answered. He’d planned to share with Jase the details of his morning run-in with Sienna but now the words wouldn’t come. As reserved as she pretended to be, he knew Sienna had been humiliated by her cheating ex-boyfriend. He doubted that was information she’d appreciate being used as her calling card in Crimson. “More like a warning.”
Emily raised a brow at Cole as her hand tightened on Jase’s arm. “Is that what this is?”
“I thought you’d want to know she was here,” Cole told his friend. “I got the impression she hadn’t called first.”
“Hardly,” Jase said with a small laugh. “I haven’t talked to Sienna since the night my mom drove away with her.”
“Because she refused to see you when you visited your mom last Christmas.” Emily came around the desk and laced her fingers through Jase’s. “She made it clear she wanted nothing to do with you.”
“I wonder what changed,” Jase murmured, almost under his breath.
Her whole world from the looks of it, Cole wanted to answer. It’s what he should have shared. But instead he only shrugged. “I don’t know her plans but thought you’d want to know, and your dad...”
Jase groaned. “This is going to rock his world.”
“She has no business showing up out of the blue.” Emily reminded Cole of an Amazon warrior getting ready for battle or a grizzly mama standing between a pack of coyotes and one of her cubs. “If she upsets Declan—”
“I’ll take care of it.” Jase wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t get riled up, Em.”
