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“Somehow I don’t find that very reassuring.”
“Well, you should. If I weren’t on duty, I’d have you in bed by now.”
“Not a chance, Mr. Beaumont.”
His grin reeked of self-confidence. “It’s ready.” He grinned wickedly at her start of surprise. “The coffee, Sunny. The co fee is ready.”
She poured, trying not to think about him looking at the bare backs of her thighs, which she was certain he was doing. “How long have you been sheriff?” she asked, setting a full cup of coffee in front of him.
“Since I got here. I moved here specifically to take the job.”
“And before that?” She sat down across from him and sipped her coffee.
For the first time since he’d asked her to dance the night before, his eyes stopped smiling. In fact, they turned hard and cold. The deep vertical clefts on both sides of his mouth no longer resembled laugh lines. “Before that I was somewhere else.”
“Oh.”
Sunny got the message. His past wasn’t open for review. She envied him that. She wished hers wasn’t. In New Orleans she was safe. No one knew about the debacle with Don Jenkins. Her friends there knew she had moved to the city from a small town, but no one had ever pressed her for information about herself. She appreciated that.
That’s why she honored Ty Beaumont’s need for privacy now, even though he was the most aggravating man she’d ever met. She refrained from asking him any probing questions and filled the yawning silence by nibbling on a cookie.
He was the first to speak. “Did you have an accident?”
Sunny followed the jutting motion of his chin down to the floor, where the debris from the drawer was still scattered. She laughed with self-derision. “I was going to look up George Henderson’s telephone number and check you out.”
“He would have felt obliged to give you a glowing report. He works for me.”
“George is a law officer?”
“My deputy.”
Sunny shook her head with disbelief. “I remember when he stole watermelons.”
“I think he still does.”
They laughed together, and it felt good. A little too good for Sunny to feel truly comfortable about it. When their laughter subsided, she realized just how intimate the setting and situation were. “It’s getting late.” She practically snatched Ty’s coffee cup away from him and carried it along with hers to the sink.
“Are you limping?”
“It’s nothing,” she said with a neg
ligent shrug as she replaced the package of cookies in the pantry.
“It’s something.”
She lifted her foot off the floor, holding her leg out straight at a thirty-degree angle. “My knee found the head of that nail when I went down on all fours. See?” She indicated the tiny red mark on her knee. “Nothing to it.”
“That’s not enough to make you limp.”
“I stubbed my toe, too.”
“What else?”
“Nothing,” she stressed.
“What?” Though Ty spoke the question softly, it conveyed his determination to get the truth from her.
“I stepped on the damn nail,” she cried in frustration. “Okay?”
