Passion to Protect Read Online Free Page B

seemed every bit as kind, as strong, as stable, until, seemingly overnight, he’d changed. Mac was never convicted of embezzling a fortune from the securities firm where he’d been working, but the shame of the public allegation had changed him into a violent, paranoid monster overnight. The sort of monster she could never risk allowing into her life or her bed—much less her children’s lives—again.
    “You’re sure you’re okay to ride?” Jake asked, his concern so at odds with her memories of her ex that guilt lashed her.
    “I am,” she said, feeling even worse as she recalled the way she’d implied earlier that he would only hold her back. Despite that, he’d come to find her. “And thank you. Thanks for riding out.”
    Taking the lead, he nudged his mount into a jog and said over his shoulder, “It’s no problem.”
    As she clucked at the pinto to get her trotting, discomfort lit up Liane’s bruised nerve endings like a switchboard. But she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to give Jake another excuse to argue that they should turn around.
    Besides, he must be hurting, too, considering that he hadn’t been back on a horse since last summer’s fires, and she didn’t hear him complaining.
    She made a mental note to bake him some more of those gooey caramel brownies he was so crazy about once this was all over—neighborly offerings that were far easier for her than conversation. Or maybe she would even invite him over for dinner one night, the way her father and the kids all kept suggesting.
    Because she had the strength to manage that and keep her distance. The strength and, most of all, the experience to remind her of just how deceptive, how deadly dangerous, a handsome, helpful, seemingly safe man could prove to be.
    * * *
    Sheriff Harry Wallace reluctantly admitted to himself that he was getting too damned old for nights like this one. With the sky crackling and the wind howling, his office phones were ringing off the hook, and the few deputies who had survived the most recent round of budget cuts were scattered from hell to breakfast, checking out “smell of smoke” and automatic alarm calls from systems tripped off by power surges. To make matters worse, his heartburn was killing him, probably because he’d been drinking coffee by the pot-full in an effort to stay focused.
    He was trying to shovel down another bite from the warmed-and-rewarmed dinner that his sister had dropped by when his hapless young assistant came fluttering through the door, a paper clutched in her hand. Seeing the terrified look on her freckled face, he put down his fork and snapped, “What is it now, Camille?”
    Her flush deepened, making him feel guilty. It was his fault, not hers, for hiring some fool kid right out of high school to replace the office manager who’d kept this place running like a top for decades. On nights like this one, he wished he had retired with Gladys rather than settle for the sort of help he could hire for only a whisker above minimum wage. The sort of help he’d had to shake his own damned family tree to find.
    “I— I’m so sorry, Sheriff Wallace,” his sister’s granddaughter managed. “I hate to bother you, but—but somehow this fax must’ve slipped behind the cabinet. I just found it, but it’s marked Urgent, so I—”
    “Well, give it here,” he said, reaching out to snatch the paper from her. He almost choked on his casserole when he peered through his reading glasses at the header.
    The Nevada Department of Corrections
    Victim Services Unit
    VICTIM NOTIFICATION REQUEST: Urgent
    Dated three days earlier, it went on to name Liane Mason, giving her father’s address along with the handwritten notation: Please remind victim to update her phone number for our system!
    But it was the message that followed that had Wallace pushing away from his desk and getting to his feet. “Damn it, Camille. I told Liane Mason not to worry. Told her that Deke and her kids would be just fine