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He could have walked away from that. He could have bedded her or not, and let her go. It wasn't the passion that kept him wound up like a too-tight watch spring. It was the fact that she'd wondered about him after he'd gone. That she'd thought of him, perhaps even mourned him. He was supposed to be tough and unflappable. Around Megan he was as stupid as a day-old calf.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she murmured, still not looking at him.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I left here determined to prove the entire town right about me. If they thought I was a criminal, then I was damn well going to be one."
That got her attention. She turned slowly until she faced him. The sunlight danced around her, outlining her shape, creating a pale halo from hair.
"You never broke the law."
"Folks around here didn't seem to notice that. If there was trouble, I was usually in the middle of it." He tilted his chair back and raised his feet until his heels rested on the corner of the desk. He crossed his ankles and smiled in remembrance. "I was going to rob banks. I figured it was the quickest way to make a name for myself."
"You wouldn't do that."
He shrugged. "I rode north for days while I made my plans. I came to a small town. I wasn't even sure where I was. Wyoming, maybe. Anyway, there was a bank there. I decided that was the one. I went into the local saloon. I needed a drink for courage."
The memories quickly came back to him. The sawdust on the floor, the scarred old bar and the gray-haired man serving drinks. There had been something kind about the bar-
keep's eyes, something that had made him confess his secrets.
"After a couple of whiskeys I started shooting my mouth off, bragging about what I was going to do. I even showed the barkeep my gun. He was real impressed."
Megan moved closer, then sank onto the chair on the other side of his desk. As she tilted her head, the light brushed against her cheek, turning her pale skin to cream and darkening her eyes to the color of a moonlit sky. Hazel to gray, fear to curiosity, curiosity to caring. He didn't want to know she cared. It wasn't enough.
"Did he help you?" she asked.
"Yeah, but not the way you'd think. He kept asking me questions about how I was going to rob the bank, then pointing out problems I hadn't thought of. After a few minutes, I realized I wasn't prepared to pull off the job." He grinned. "I felt awful then. I wasn't even a good criminal. When I admitted that to the old man, he smiled at me and told me it was for the best. Then he pulled out his badge and tossed it on the table. In addition to owning the saloon, he was the town sheriff."
Instinctively, Justin reached up for the badge on his chest. It was a different shape, a circle surrounded the star, but the meaning was the same.
"You must have been shocked."
"That's putting it mildly. I just about sh—" He glanced up at her and cleared his throat. "I about embarrassed myself something awful. But Williams was a fair man. He said I hadn't committed a crime and someone's just thinking about committing one wasn't enough to get a body arrested. Then he did the damnedest thing. He asked me if I Deeded a job, then offered to hire me as a deputy."
It was as if that had happened yesterday. Justin could still feel the intense jolt of pleasure, followed by anger as he'd assumed the old man was taunting him. Bullying him the way the children at school had until he'd gotten big enough to make them stop. But Williams had been serious. His rindly eyes had squarely held Justin's gaze as he'd ex-Dlained the duties involved with being a deputy in the tiny
town. Last of all Williams had pointed out that Justin would have to stop his plans for a life of crime.
"He believed in you," Megan said slowly. She leaned forward in her seat. "He was the first one. No one here believed. Not even me."
He didn't think she would figure it out so quickly. "I owe him a lot. I paid back some of my debt to him when we had trouble a while back, but it's not enough. He's the reason I came back here. He told me I had to make peace with this town before I could go on with what I wanted to do."
He'd been staring at the toes of his worn boots, but from the corner of his eye he saw Megan stiffen. "You didn't know I was going to be here, did you?" she asked.
