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“Got a call,” he told her then. “Alex Jansen’s fiancée. Said to tell you the sheriff is heading this way. She’s worried ’bout you. Asked that you call her tonight. ”
See, that was the problem with friends, they wanted to know every damned thing.
Where your head was, where it was going, what you were thinking, and what you were feeling. She’d made the mistake of making friends with Janey Mackay and her sister-in-law, Chaya, last year. Big mistake. Never mess with Mackays, she reminded herself.
“I’ll call her back later. ” She shrugged.
“Sheriff will be here soon. ” His thick forearms crossed on top of the table. “Zeke ain’t no man’s fool, Rogue. Or no woman’s. If he’s askin’ questions, then something’s wrong. ”
She shook her head at that. “No. He’s just making sure. He’s anal like that, Jonesy. ”
She poured herself another drink, sipped at the liquid this time, and stared into the full dance floor. Normally, she would have been out there herself, dancing, laughing, pretending. Always pretending.
“They were good boys, Rogue. ” He patted her hand awkwardly and scowled down at her. “You did your best for them, girl, even when I told you they were gonna come to a bad end with all their womanizing. You can’t ask more than that from yourself.
Whatever happened up there with them, it’s not on your shoulders. ”
Maybe she hadn’t done enough. Joe and Jaime with their laughter and their devil- may-care attitudes. Maybe she had missed something, been too busy, too self-involved to see something that could have saved them.
She couldn’t figure it out. She just couldn’t make it make sense. That was why she was sitting here at a dark table staring into the smoky atmosphere of her bar rather than scandalizing the county as a hostess at the most exclusive and notorious restaurant in the town, Mackay’s. She was here instead, hiding, hiding from the false condolences and the questions she knew she would receive elsewhere.
She was a Walker. White trash, gutter-guzzling sleaze was but one of the nicer descriptions she’d heard. She’d laughed in public over it, sometimes; she shed tears in private and wondered why the hell she stayed.
Pulaski County wasn’t the center of the universe, she had told herself countless nights.
She could return to Boston, teach anywhere she wanted to teach, and escape the mountain-bred hypocrisy and cruelties she had known here. But even in Boston, she had never fit in.
And Boston didn’t have Sheriff Zeke Mayes.
God, she was such a fool. If any man had ever proven he had no intention of touching her, then it was Sheriff Mayes. He stared at her sometimes as though the very thought of being around her was horrifying. And then there were times, times his brown eyes had darkened further, his lashes had lowered, and she could see the hunger he thought he was hiding from her.
There were times she wanted to crawl into him and just lay against him. Nights she dreamed of being wrapped in those strong, muscular arms. And there were nights she actually faced the truth that even if it ever happened, it would never last. And she wondered which was worse. Never having? Or having and losing?
“You’re worryin’ me, girl,” Jonesy finally said with a sigh. “Sit-tin’ around drinkin’ and reflectin’ ain’t your way. Remember that? You don’t mope and feel sorry for yourself; we taught you better than that, remember?”
Her lips tilted. “They. ” The little mountain bikers’ club that didn’t even have a name.
Thirteen overgrown teenagers in men’s and women’s bodies who had known her father at one time or another rallied around her and taught the too-soft little schoolteacher how to be the rogue she had been named for.
They had been regulars at the bar. They had seen the couple she had left with that night, and they had helped her plot her vengeance against them. They had sheltered her for the first year beneath their protection, and they had taught her how to be tough. How to fight. How to laugh at the insults, and how to grow up.
“I’m fine, Jonesy,” she promised him. “Just a little mellow. ”
She sipped at the whisky. She didn’t drink it often. It took a certain mood, a certain anger to allow her to enjoy liquor. She was a beer girl, until the anger overflowed her control and she had to face more than she wanted to face.
“A little too mellow to be facing that sheriff. ” Jonesy pulled the whisky bottle out of her reach with a temperamental scowl. “You never face your enemy weak, girl. I taught you better than that. ”
“Zeke’s not my enemy. ” But she didn’t reach for the bottle again.
Zeke wasn’t her enemy, but he was her weakness. He made everything inside her weak, made her ache and heat, and made her wish for things that she knew she couldn’t have.
“Sheriff Mayes is gonna break your heart,” Jonesy warned her with a hint of anger.
“Pull yourself up here now. He’s gonna be here soon, and you don’t want to see him while you’re feeling sorry for yourself and missin’ those boys. ”
She shook her head, almost smiling. That was Jonesy. Never let them see you bleed.
And she was bleeding. She could feel it, from a wound inside her heart that she couldn’t seem to close.
