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Nora cleared her throat and shook her head, though her delectable lips were twitching. It was everything he could do not to pull her off that horse and give her a proper goodbye.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” she said.
Adam grinned up at her. “I’ll try.”
She snorted and nudged her horse toward home, muttering something about men that he probably didn’t want to know about.
Adam turned back to catch Sunshine watching him with a speculative eye.
“Things seem to be going well between the two of you.”
Adam’s own cheeks grew a little warm. Was he blushing? How the mighty had fallen. He cleared his throat and turned his attention to the street, his gaze roaming casually over the citizens going about their business.
“Things are…good. I think.”
Sunshine surprisingly didn’t press him on it, just clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Glad to hear it. Come on, Mr. Brady. I’ll show you what needs doing.”
They turned to go inside, but something flashed in the corner of Adam’s eye, and he stopped, looking back over his shoulder to see what had caught his attention. Nothing seemed to be amiss. People were walking along the sidewalks, going in and out of the businesses that dotted the street. Horses and a few wagons rode up and down. Just a typical day in Desolation.
He frowned, and Sunshine looked around the street before looking back at him. “Is something wrong?”
Adam hesitated and then shook his head. “No. I thought I might have seen something, but I must have been wrong.”
He tried to shake off the unease settling in his gut and turned back to the sheriff’s office.
Sunshine gave him a tour, not that there was much to see. The office sported a front room with a desk and a few chairs, a potbellied stove with a coffeepot, and that was about it. Aside from the small cot where Daisy took her naps, of course. Two decent-size cells were located in the back of the building, each sporting two cots.
“We have a man who comes in a few days a week to keep things around here tidy and run errands for us. Frank. You’ll meet him soon, I’m sure. But it will be nice to have a full-time assistant deputy to help out with the heavy lifting,” Sunshine said. “The sheriff likes to keep daytime hours since Daisy came along, and while I don’t mind keeping an eye on things at night and when he’s not here, especially since I live just upstairs, it would still be nice to have an extra body down here who can relieve us both occasionally.”
Adam nodded, but his brow furrowed. “Yes, well, let’s wait and see if Woodson actually agrees to this before we make too many plans.”
Sunshine just laughed again. “The sheriff really isn’t as bad as he’d like everyone to think.”
Adam gave him the look that remark deserved, and Sunshine grinned and jerked his head toward the desk. “Have a seat and I’ll give you the rundown of how we do things around here.”
Thirty minutes later, Adam stepped back into the sun and clapped his ill-fitting hat back on his head. He really needed to find his old hat. Or buy a new one. If he could ever stay at a job long enough to collect some decent pay. Whether or not the sheriff’s office would be that job…he didn’t want to begin to hope.
Of course, working side by side with Woodson would be interesting. But he hated to admit it, he kind of liked the man. A strange development after spending so many years avoiding the mere mention of him. But he just couldn’t help himself. That curmudgeonly old codger was growing on him.
The job itself seemed interesting and more suited to his skills than any of the others he’d tried so far. Woodson ran a tight ship, and Adam wasn’t ashamed to admit he was impressed. Though even if he wasn’t and it sounded like the worst job in the world, at this point, he’d take it. He was running very low on time, and he had no doubt Woodson would have his backside marched to the town’s boundaries the second these thirty days were up.
Things with Nora… He cringed away from examining them too closely. They certainly couldn’t go back to pretending there was nothing between them. And he didn’t want to. But he also didn’t want either one of them to feel rushed into defining what they were to each other because of some ridiculous ticking clock that Woodson and the Town Council had imposed on them. They both deserved the time to decide what their future held. And that couldn’t happen if Adam got kicked out of town.
So the best solution for all of them was forthisjob to stick. He was running out of places to destroy…er, work.
Adam went to untie Barnaby when that nagging feeling hit the pit of his stomach again. He stopped and looked around as casually as he could. Something was off. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but his world-is-about-to-go-to-hell intuition was screaming at him.
Instead of mounting his horse, he shoved his hands in his pockets and crossed the street to the general store at a leisurely pace. A man peeled off from behind a group that was chatting near the front of Doc’s clinic. Adam paused to look at a selection of pies that Martha had arranged in the window, though his gaze was on the reflection of the stranger who also crossed the street.
Adam’s gut twisted. He’d known something was wrong. He continued along the walkway in front of the store and caught the reflection of the man behind him in the store’s window, following him from a safe distance. Adam picked up his pace until he reached the tavern. He pushed through the doors and made his way between the tables toward the back, moving quickly but giving his follower enough time to see where he was going.
He darted down the dimly lit back hallway and pressed himself into a corner to wait. A few moments later, his follower turned the corner, and Adam grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him back against the wall.
“Who are you?” he growled at him. “Why are you following me?”
“What? I’m not! I’m nobody—let go!”
The man tried to push him off, but Adam held tight, one arm pressed against the man’s throat while his other hand searched through his pockets. The man shoved him off just as Adam snagged a crumpled paper from his pocket. He took off running, ripping the paper out of Adam’s hands as he did so, leaving Adam holding just a corner. Adam hurried after him.
