Talk Me Down. Victoria Dahl
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had changed. Nada.
He was almost to his truck when a white pickup approached from the west. It slowed, coming nearly to a stop before it rolled by Ben’s truck. Through the window, Ben spied the gawking, wrinkled face of Miles Webster, proprietor of the town’s biweekly newspaper, if one could call it that.
“Shit,” Ben whispered.
He met Miles’s eyes, careful not to show trepidation or guilt. You’ve got nothing on me, old man, he transmitted through his gaze. Then the man’s eyes shifted, and Ben followed, turning to look toward Molly’s house.
There she stood, waving, framed like a picture in the doorway, the early morning light glowing off her bare legs.
“Oh, shit,” Ben groaned.
Miles offered a smug grin when Ben turned back, then he sped off in a cloud of diesel fumes.
Ben had managed to stay out of the paper’s gossip section for thirty-two years. Come Thursday that was going to change.
And if there was anything he hated more than secrets, it was scandal.
HER COMPUTER SEEMED to be purring at her when Molly sat down to work that morning. Or maybe that was just her body. She’d gotten her groove back and she could feel it. Hoo-yeah.
She knew what her next story would be. Months had passed with not a flicker of an idea, but now she knew.
A serious, hard-jawed cowboy. No, wait. A sheriff. Not in a mountain town though. She’d made that mistake before. She would use Ben Lawson again, but only for inspiration this time, not as the flesh-and-blood man made into fantasy.
Her first story, the one that had made her into a star, the one that still sold better than any of her other books…that had been far too close for comfort. She’d written about Ben, about that night. She’d even identified him as the best friend of the heroine’s older brother. In a small mountain town. In Colorado. Then suddenly her first attempt at erotic fiction had been sold, published, and read by thousands…and it was far too personal. She couldn’t tell anyone what she’d done.
The big secret of her life had been entirely accidental, but she supposed it was for the best. She had a wonderful career that she loved, a decent income, and a little mystery to go along with her boring life. And now she had her muse back.
That first book had been her most inspired, but she had a feeling she could make this one even hotter. She was older and wiser and she had a few good ideas of what she’d like to do with a certain hard-jawed police chief.
“Sheriff,” she corrected herself. “A sheriff in a Wild West town with dark brown eyes and a heart of steel. And maybe some kinky needs he just can’t satisfy with the God-fearing women of the county.”
Molly giggled in guilty delight. Oh, yeah. The sheriff is a lonely man until a mysterious widow moves in next door. A widow who leaves her curtains open at night, lamps blazing. Even an angel would be tempted to watch the show, and the sheriff is far from angelic. But indecent exposure is a crime, and the lawman is determined to make her pay with his own special kind of private discipline.
She pictured Ben in his jeans—unbuttoned—and his black cowboy hat tilted low over his face, and nothing else.
“This,” Molly murmured as she typed the first few words, “is going to be good.”
STRIPPER.
Ben wrote the word in his notebook in black ink and underlined it. Then he crossed it off.
That couldn’t be right. Sure, she’d started some mystery career during college, and plenty of good, nice, college girls had been sucked into dancing for money, but it still couldn’t be right. There were no strip clubs up here. Whatever she was doing, she had to be able to do it from home. Stripping was good money, but she couldn’t have saved enough to retire at twenty-seven.
Unless she was one of those headliners who traveled the country and got paid big bucks to dance at the best clubs. Maybe he shouldn’t have crossed it off so quickly.
Or maybe he’d seen too many HBO specials in his life.
Ben threw the pen onto the flimsy newspaper open on his desk and turned back to the computer to search for her on Google one last time. His name was there in black and white in the weekly rag, right next to hers. He wanted to find out her secret before Miles Webster did.
Good old Miles had ruined Ben’s high school years. Or more accurately, Ben’s father had ruined those years, and Miles Webster had gleefully magnified each painful moment, drawing out the scandal until every last detail—true or not—had been reported.
Ben had hated Miles for years, perhaps because it had been so hard to hate his own father. Hard, but not necessarily impossible. Not for a teenager anyway.
Still, he’d worked through all that, or thought he had, but seeing his name in Miles’s gossip column was burning a hole in his gut.
And our dedicated Chief Lawson added a new duty to his job description this week. He played welcoming committee to Tumble Creek’s newest citizen, visiting her in the early morning hours to offer a friendly and thorough hello. And who is this new citizen? Our very own Molly Jennings, returning to a hometown that welcomes her with open arms. Check back next week for more information on what Molly’s been up to for the past decade!
“More information,” Ben snarled. Miles was going to love this.
What a fiasco. He was going to have to avoid her like the plague, at least until he figured out her secret. What if she’d been a prostitute, for God’s sake?
“You’ve lost your mind,” he muttered to himself. He was not going to let Miles drive him crazy again. He was an adult now, not some tortured kid.
“Chief?” Brenda asked from the doorway. “You’re not upset about that column, are you?”
“No.” Ben closed the Google screen and reopened the report he was supposed to be working on.
“He’s got no right to gossip about you when you’re doing your job.”
“It’s nothing, Brenda. I was just doing a favor for a friend. No big deal.”
She nodded, but her eyebrows fit together like two puzzle pieces. “How’s Molly Jennings holding up?”
“Fine.”
“I suppose she’s…” Brenda tapped her fingernails together and shrugged. “She must be real different after living in the city so long.”
Different. Ben frowned at his computer. Yeah, she was different.
“Chief?”
“What?” He glanced up just in time to catch Brenda shaking her head as she headed back toward her desk by the front door.
Disgusted with himself, Ben forced his mind back to his Monday duties. He reviewed the report he’d finally finished, then sent it off to the Creek County Sheriff’s office. They kept in close coordination so Sheriff McTeague didn’t have to waste time patrolling this part of the county. If anything needed his attention, Ben got in touch. If Ben needed something—rescue equipment or a search party—the sheriff volunteered it.
A few minutes later, the sheriff’s own report popped up on the screen and Ben took a half hour to go over the whole thing. Nothing out of the ordinary. A few accidents. One dead moose in the middle of the highway. Two DUIs. Domestic incidents.
Ben memorized the names involved and printed out the document to add to his files. Done.
A weather alert popped to life on his screen and Ben scanned it quickly, then breathed a sigh of relief. The first big snowstorm of the season, but it looked like they’d only catch the edge of it. Good thing, since it was supposed to